Daughter savages stepmum

Richard Pryor’s daughter Rain has savaged her stepmother in print, hinting that she was trying to speed up the comic legend’s death.

The actress implied that Jennifer Lee Pryor was withholding her husband’s medication that could ease the condition he has suffered since 1986.

Interviewer Chaunce Hayden, from America’s Steppin' Out magazine, asked: "Do you think she's trying to speed his illness along because she'll benefit from his death?"

Miss Pryor, right, replied: "Put it this way, if you're a woman who this man used to beat up for years and years and years then all of a sudden, when he's at his sickest, sickest moment she marries him. Why? What's the motive?

“And now her name is on everything that has his name attached to it ... A long time ago he made the unfortunate choice to invite this woman back into his life."

Rain was talking as her one-woman show Fried Chicken And Latekes opened off Broadway.

The show is autobiographical, but she warned potential audiences: "I'm a comedic actor, not a stand-up comedian.”

“If there's someone who's thinking they're coming to see me because they really want to see my father, then they should go rent a video. This ain't my daddy's stand-up."

She told the New York Daily News: “When he wasn't getting high or when he wasn't around women he was the most amazing person ever

"I also don't think my father could have been a real success had he been a real father. He was very focused… the womanizing and the drugs was because he was so full of creative energy. He had to have that. It's almost like when you have a headache you take an aspirin."

Published: 19 Jul 2004