If you ask Jennifer Lee, her husband Richard Pryor and Marlon Brando were more than just friends.
Lee, who was married to the late comedian twice — from 1981 to 1982 and 2001 until he passed in 2005 — responded to rumors that Pryor slept with Brando after Quincy Jones’ claimed it happened in an interview with Vulture.
“Musical principles exist, man. Musicians today can’t go all the way with the music because they haven’t done their homework with the left brain. Music is emotion and science,” Jones told the publication in an interview published on Thursday, February 7. “You don’t have to practice emotion because that comes naturally. Technique is different. If you can’t get your finger between three and four and seven and eight on a piano, you can’t play. You can only get so far without technique. People limit themselves musically, man. Do these musicians know tango? Macumba? Yoruba music? Samba? Bossa nova? Salsa? Cha-cha?”
He continued, “[Marlon] Brando used to go cha-cha dancing with us. He could dance his ass off. He was the most charming motherf—ker you ever met. He’d f—k anything. Anything! He’d f—k a mailbox. James Baldwin. Richard Pryor. Marvin Gaye.”
TMZ caught up with Lee after Jones’ words made headlines, and she seemingly confirmed the story.
”It was the ’70s! Drugs were still good, especially quaaludes. If you did enough cocaine, you’d f—k a radiator and send it flowers in the morning,” Lee told TMZ on Thursday.
Pryor, who won an Emmy in 1973 as one of the writers on a Lily Tomlin special and five Grammys for his comedy alums, suffered a heart attack and died nine days after he turned 65 in December 2005. Brando, meanwhile, was known for multiple film roles, including 1954’s On the Waterfront and 1972’s The Godfather. He passed away in July 2004.
