COMING TO TERMS WITH MY FLAWED DAD: Richard Pryor’s Daughter Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor

AFTER A CHILDHOOD SPENT STRADDLING TWO WORLDS, THE DAUGHTER OF THE ICONIC COMEDIAN IS RECKONING WITH THE PAST

- ANGELA ANDALORO

Family Connection "He was constantly questioning and figuring out the world," says Elizabeth of her father (in 1981).

Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor was 6 years old when she met her father, the late legendary comedian Richard Pryor, for the first time. “I loved him from the minute I saw him,” Elizabeth, now 59, says. “I was like, ‘Give me more.’ And I pretty much felt that way, honestly, until he died [in 2005 at age 65]. I wanted to really connect with him, wanted to know he loved me, wanted to be enough for him.”

The third of Richard’s seven children with six women, Elizabeth gained much of her early knowledge of her famous dad, the star of hit movies like Lady Sings the Blues and Stir Crazy, from memorabilia that her mother, Maxine Silverman, kept from his life and career. Richard and Silverman, who was White and Jewish, dated for about two years and split shortly before Elizabeth’s birth in 1967. Once Elizabeth and Richard started to forge a relationship, Elizabeth had to navigate a kind of culture shock whenever she left Boston, where she and her mom lived, to visit him in Los Angeles. “We flew first-class when he took us on vacations,” she says. “And on the other hand, my mother was still working as a secretary and trying to make ends meet for us. I literally lived in two different worlds.”