Entertainment
Oprah’s Playing a Madam in the New Richard Pryor Biopic
This Feb. 22, 2014 file photo shows Oprah Winfrey speaking at the 45th NAACP Image Awards in Pasadena, Calif. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)
(The Washington Post) – Well, this could be fun.
Oprah Winfrey will be playing a madam in Lee Daniels’s new Richard Pryor biopic, ET reported Tuesday.
Apparently the grandmother of the legendary comedian, Marie Carter Pryor Bryant, ran a string of whorehouses in Peoria, Ill., while she raised Pryor. Pryor’s mother, Gertrude, used to work for Bryant. She left the family when Pryor was 10 years old.
The role sounds like it could be equal parts light and dark. In his autobiography, “Pryor Convictions,” the comic compared his grandmother to a sunflower, writing that she was “big, strong, bright, appealing.” But she was also abusive toward Pryor, and he called her a “mean, tough, controlling bitch” who “made it her job to scare the s— out of people.”
