Richard Pryor Trivia
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48 free Richard Pryor trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Richard Pryor trivia quiz covers the stand-up comedian that Jerry Seinfeld called the Picasso of the profession. The easy questions are the ones any comedy fan knows: his Illinois hometown, his four films with Gene Wilder, the night he set himself on fire, and the disease that put him in a scooter. From there it moves into the career: the 1967 Las Vegas epiphany, the run of Grammy-winning albums, the Blazing Saddles writing credit he never got to act on, hosting Saturday Night Live in its first season, and the variety show cancelled after four episodes. The harder end is for people who own the box set: the record label he fought over That Nigger's Crazy, the singer who rocked him through stage fright at the Village Gate, the character Mudbone, the film he was replaced in by Gregory Hines, the $40 million Columbia deal, the children's show with Krofft puppets, the number of times he married, and the awards that came at the end, from the first Mark Twain Prize to the National Film Registry. It also touches on his difficult childhood and health honestly, without dwelling on it. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on Pryor, his albums and his films before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our stand-up comedy, Gene Wilder and Saturday Night Live quizzes next.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which Illinois city was Richard Pryor born and raised?
Peoria
Richard Pryor was born in Peoria on 1 December 1940 and grew up there; the city unveiled a bronze statue of him downtown in 2015.
Q 02Which future star was an unknown ensemble player on The Richard Pryor Show in 1977?
Robin Williams
Robin Williams. The series was cancelled within weeks, but its bit players did better: inside a year Williams was starring in a sitcom of his own.
Q 03Pryor was the first recipient of which award in 1998?
The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize
The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize. Pryor's written reply kept his old edge: he felt great, he said, to be honored on a par with 'a great white man — now that's funny!'
Q 04Which Mel Brooks comedy did Pryor help write?
Blazing Saddles
Blazing Saddles. Pryor co-wrote the 1974 western spoof and was in line to star as Sheriff Bart, but he was turned down and the role went to Cleavon Little.
Q 05With which actor did Pryor make four films, starting with Silver Streak in 1976?
Gene Wilder
Gene Wilder. Silver Streak turned Pryor from a supporting player into one of Hollywood's hottest box-office draws, and the pair went on to make three more comedies.
Q 06What business did Pryor's grandmother run, in which he grew up?
A brothel
A brothel. Pryor later wrote that the relatives, neighbors, working women and winos he lived among there inspired a lifetime of comic material.
Q 07Pryor played the Piano Man to which Motown star's Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues (1972)?
Diana Ross
Diana Ross. She had never acted in a film before, yet the part brought her a Best Actress Oscar nomination, and the Piano Man was Pryor's first big screen role.
Q 08Which singer rocked a terrified young Pryor 'like a baby' before he opened for her?
Nina Simone
Nina Simone recalled that Pryor, opening for her at the Village Gate, 'shook like he had malaria' and she rocked him in her arms night after night.
Q 09Which comedian was Pryor's initial model before he found his own controversial voice?
Bill Cosby
Bill Cosby. Pryor said he made a lot of money copying him but felt like a robot comic repeating the same lines, which is why he tore up the act in 1967.
Q 10What did Pryor do on a Las Vegas stage in 1967 that ended his clean-cut act?
Walked off
Walked off. At the Aladdin he caught Dean Martin staring from a front table, realized he no longer knew who he was up there, asked the sold-out room what he was doing there and left.
Q 11What was the title of Richard Pryor's 1995 autobiography?
Pryor Convictions
Pryor Convictions. In the memoir, written with Todd Gold, he finally admitted that the 1980 fire he had long passed off as an accident was something he did to himself on purpose.
Q 12To which Californian city did Pryor retreat around 1970 to immerse himself in the counterculture?
Berkeley
In Berkeley, Pryor fell in with Black Panther Huey P. Newton and novelist Ishmael Reed, and rebuilt his act around race and street life.
Q 13For which comedian's 1973 TV special did Pryor share an Emmy as a writer?
Lily Tomlin
Lily Tomlin. Pryor also acted in the special: in its sketch 'Juke and Opal' he played Juke, an addict trying to get clean who drops into the diner run by Tomlin's Opal.
Q 21After a 1979 trip to which country did Pryor swear off using a racial slur in his act?
Kenya
After a 1979 trip to Kenya, where he said he saw no one he could call by that word, Pryor dropped the slur, as he explained in Live on the Sunset Strip.
Q 22Which 1980 comedy, grossing over $100 million, was Pryor's biggest box-office hit?
Stir Crazy
Stir Crazy. It took just over $100 million in North America, and the tough-guy strut that Pryor's character puts on to survive jail gave the country a catchphrase: 'We bad!'
Q 23Which Oscar-winning actor stepped behind the camera to direct Pryor's biggest hit, a 1980 buddy comedy?
Sidney Poitier
Q 14Which small label, claiming it still owned Pryor's recordings, tried to block his 1974 breakthrough album?
Laff Records
Laff Records. The fight ended with Pryor free to leave, but Laff kept his old tapes, and every time he had a new hit it rushed out another album of leftovers, right up to 1983.
Q 15On New Year's Day 1978, an angry Pryor emptied a gun into what?
A car
A car. The shooting got him arrested, and on stage Pryor turned it into one of his best-known routines: his wife was leaving him, he explained, so he shot the car.
Q 16Which documentary of a 1972 Los Angeles concert intercuts Pryor riffing on race?
Wattstax
Wattstax. The benefit concert marked seven years since the Watts riots, and a then little-known Pryor supplies the film's biting running commentary between the songs.
Q 17Pryor was the first Black host of which show, in its debut 1975 season?
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live. NBC was so wary of what Pryor might say that it ordered a five-second delay on the live show for the night he hosted.
Q 18Which comedian played the interviewer opposite Pryor in the famous 1975 'word association' sketch?
Chevy Chase
Chevy Chase. His job interviewer trades ever-uglier slurs with Pryor's applicant; Paul Mooney said he wrote it after his own grilling by the show's bosses, though Chase also claims a hand in it.
Q 19The Richard Pryor Show was scheduled against which hit sitcom in 1977?
Happy Days
Happy Days. NBC put the provocative comic on at 8 p.m. on Tuesdays against two of TV's biggest family hits, and after fights with the censors and low ratings the show was gone in four episodes.
Q 20On his short-lived 1977 variety show, Pryor played which figure in a famous sketch?
The first Black President
The first Black President. Pryor would not tone the series down for NBC's censors, who were watching it closely, and it was cancelled after only four episodes.
Sidney Poitier. Famous for serious dramas, he spent the 1970s directing broad comedies, among them Uptown Saturday Night with Pryor in a small part, and stayed off screen for this one.
Q 24Which part did Pryor play in the 1978 film musical that featured Michael Jackson?
The Wiz
The Wiz. Pryor's mighty wizard turns out to be a frightened fraud, hiding behind a fearsome mechanical front.
Q 25Pryor joked that his 1980 fire began when he dunked a cookie into what?
A glass of low-fat milk
A glass of low-fat milk. His bedtime milk and cookies blew up, he claimed, when he mixed low-fat with pasteurized; then he dropped the cover story and gave his freebase pipe a wheedling voice of its own.
Q 26Who replaced Pryor at the last minute in Mel Brooks's History of the World, Part I after the fire?
Gregory Hines
Gregory Hines. The Broadway tap star had never made a film, and stepping in for the burned Pryor days before shooting gave him his screen debut and the start of a movie career.
Q 27Which NFL great did Pryor hire at his film company, Indigo Productions, then fire?
Jim Brown
Jim Brown. Pryor had promised Indigo would open Hollywood's doors to minorities, so dismissing Brown and three other Black staff within months brought an angry response from the NAACP.
Q 28In which superhero sequel did Pryor play computer programmer Gus Gorman?
Superman III
Superman III. Pryor was offered more than any Black actor had ever been paid before he had even read the script, and he later admitted he thought the film was terrible.
Q 29Which role, later played by a younger comedian, was written with Pryor in mind?
Billy Ray Valentine in Trading Places
Billy Ray Valentine in Trading Places. The script was developed for Pryor and his regular screen partner, but after his 1980 burns the part went to a newcomer making only his second film.
Q 30What was Richard Pryor's short-lived 1984 CBS children's show called?
Pryor's Place
Pryor's Place. A comic famous for his profanity spent a season of Saturday mornings among Sid and Marty Krofft's puppets, playing to children.