The one and only comedian Robin Williams said could do everything: “This man is a genius”
Everyone in every profession dreams of being a jack of every trade that can do it all, and while you can say that Robin Williams accomplished that as a comedian and comic performer, there was only one of his peers he said was capable of doing absolutely everything.
There wasn’t much that Williams couldn’t do, and his career proved it. He was a sensation on the stand-up circuit, found even bigger stardom as the lead of a ratings hit sitcom, and graduated to the silver screen to become one of the most popular and highest-paid comedy stars of his generation.
Beyond that, he seamlessly segued into drama, won an Academy Award from four nominations, and repeatedly underlined that whether it was straight-faced and serious fare, intense thrillers, laugh-a-minute comedy capers, or his frequent returns to the stage, there was nothing out of his grasp.
He had many inspirations, but two stood head and shoulders above the rest. One of them was Peter Sellers, who he called “the most influential” actor he’d ever laid eyes on, with Dr Strangelove sticking in his mind as a seminal experience, and the other was Jonathan Winters, who became a friend, mentor, and father figure.
However, in terms of his peers, Williams couldn’t see past the trailblazing, pioneering, taboo-smashing, boundary-pushing revolutionary that was Richard Pryor. “This man is a genius,” he once said. “Who else can take all the forms of comedy, slapstick, satire, mime, and stand-up, and turn it into something that’ll offend everyone?”
Plenty tried, but nobody really came close to being deemed fit to lace his boots, with the possible exception of early 1980s Eddie Murphy. Williams admitted he was envious of Pryor’s “ability to be so bold in talking about himself,” and adding that personal touch to his routines was another reason why he viewed him as the best of the best.
For the Dead Poets Society and Good Will Hunting favourite’s money, 1979’s Richard Pryor: Live in Concert was the single greatest individual performance in the history of stand-up comedy, and knowing how much Williams adored the art form for his entire life, praise doesn’t come much higher than having one of the all-time greats herald Pryor’s tour de force as the pinnacle of the artform.
“To use Chuck Yeager’s line, he broke the envelope,” the actor admired. “He pushed it beyond anything anyone could ever dream of, and it’s deep stuff.” There weren’t enough superlatives in his locker to sum up what Pryor meant, not only to him, but to comedy in general, and he was far from alone in that regard.
Most people would place Williams and Pryor near the top of the mountain in terms of stand-up’s most iconic and definitive performers, but if you asked the former, he wouldn’t have thought he deserved to be mentioned in the same breath.
