Mason Pryor walked on the stage for “Showtime At The Apollo” to an audience already curious about what the son of the legendary comedian Richard Pryor would have to say.
“He look just like his daddy!” a woman can be heard saying in the crowd.
Pryor received his first laugh by commenting on the fact that he was super nervous. “I can literally hear my dad up in heaven right now, like,’Boy you better not mess this up!'”
Unfortunately, it went south from there.
Not so funny bone
Pryor’s first official bit about President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin didn’t go as planned. Three lines into his bit, he began to receive a long chorus of no’s, boos, and disapproving head shakes from the unforgiving New York audience. They weren’t in defiance of his jokes— they simply just weren’t funny.
Upon hearing the heckles from the Apollo Theater audience, Pryor said, “Boo? Have some respect.”
Pryor continued to stand on the stage in a bit of bewilderment looking back at host, Steve Harvey, who was on the sidelines banging on his mic to see if it was still on and telling the crowd, “You’re not gonna boo me!”
By the time Pryor caught wind of some audience members telling him to “keep going,” he had already stopped for too long. In true “Showtime at the Apollo” fashion, he was ushered off the stage.
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“I bombed when I shouldn’t have,” Pryor said backstage. “I wasn’t funny.”
Second time’s a charm
According to the Huffington Post, Steve Harvey invited Pryor back on stage at the end of the night as a way to encourage him. Pryor reportedly had a quick hit with a story about the breakup between his father Richard Pryor and his mother Geraldine Mason.
Pryor also caught up with TMZ to discuss the fateful night that has since gone viral on Twitter.
“A lot of comedians did call me and tell me ‘this is your first big TV thing, more than one comedians bombed before. Stick with it. Write your material more rigid next time,’” he said.
“I went from being ‘Yo, you’re that one comedian’s son,’ to ‘Yo, this dude is not funny but he’s here!” joked the comedian.
Take a look at Pryor’s “Showtime at the Apollo” performance below:
