Entertainment

Richard the great

He was a pioneer, drug addict, civil rights leader, violent wild man, and one of the funniest comedians of all time.

Showtime’s new documentary, “Richard Pryor: Omit The Logic,” which airs Friday at 9, tells Pryor’s tale in all its tragic complexity.

Jennifer Lee Pryor, the comedian’s two-time wife — she’s identified in the film as “Wife # 4 & 7” — and one of the film’s executive producers, spoke candidly to The Post about the comic legend, including how life at home could be both wonderful and a living nightmare.

“To tell you the truth, it was a thrill a minute,” says Pryor, who first met the comic in 1977. “Living one week with Richard Pryor would be the equivalent to living 25 years in Kansas with somebody [else]. It was intense.”

Pryor was raised in a bordello by a prostitute mother and pimp father. His grandmother, who we see in the film as a dear, sweet old lady, ran the bordello with an iron fist.

With those influences, his life was affected in predictable ways, including bouts of addiction to freebase cocaine.

Pryor began his career in the ’60s playing nightclub with an act that was so close to Bill Cosby’s that Cosby had to tell him to stop.

Pryor started to feel that he was betraying himself with his material — jokes with no personal relevance — and eventually had a meltdown on a Las Vegas stage where he insulted the audience.

After that, he drastically altered his act and his image, ditched suits for street clothes, abandoned Vegas, and began talking about the harsh realities of race at that time.

Early clips show Pryor in the middle of a set when a white man in the back menacingly bellows, “You just be glad I have a sense of humor.”

“I am glad,” Pryor replied, “Because I’ve seen what you do to us.”

Pryor was comedy’s gift to the 1970s.

“I watched the movie ‘Logan’s Run,’ ” went one bit about the futuristic 1976 drama starring Brit actor Michael York.

“There ain’t no ni–ers in it. I said, ‘White people ain’t planning for us to be here.’ That’s why we gotta make movies.”

From a personal standpoint, Jennifer says that when Richard was off drugs, he was a loving and thoughtful husband.

“One birthday, he hid presents all over the house, like an easter egg hunt,” she says. “No assistant found these. He shopped for them. He bought me a beautiful cloisonné egg that had a full moon. It was in gold and lapis and it had a moon above it, and he said, ‘This is a symbol of our love.’”

But when Richard Pryor succumbed to drugs, Jekyll became Hyde. One incident that happened when he was high on freebase cocaine in 1980 became part of comedy lore.

“Richard told me he was gonna hurt himself,” she says. “Richard never threatened without following through. Never. I knew he was f—ing serious. I got the f— out of Dodge.”

Later that day, Pryor set himself on fire in a highly-publicized incident that revealed how out of control the comedian was.

Pryor went back and forth like that until he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1986, the beginning of a slow decline that ended with his death in 2005.

“I think the darkness [in his life] was overwhelming, and he examined it in his work,” Jennifer says.

“Richard’s life was his work and his work was his life, and that comes with the territory. Genius is not free.”