The legendary Pam Grier.
Trevor.
Welcome to The Daily Show.
Trevor, hey.
TREVOR NOAH: [laughs]
What we going to do when you leave us, boy?
Come on.
TREVOR NOAH: Well, I'm not leaving life.
No, but I look forward to you and hearing you and--
Thank you.
--and keeping me laughing at great stuff.
- Thank you very much. - Humanity.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
[cheering]
Because I feel like--
and I'm not the only one who thinks this.
If it weren't for you, so many of the movies
that we know and love today wouldn't have been possible.
Because everybody who knows film knows that if it weren't
for Pam Grier and what she did with all the movies
that she made, there wouldn't have
been Black women on screen, kicking ass the way
that we see them today.
You were the original action star
at a time when Black women weren't allowed
to be portrayed like that.
So thank you.
[cheering] Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, as you know, quickly, as a filmmaker,
you have to develop an audience to be prepared
for a woman performing martial arts,
whether it's internal kung fu, external karate,
an external form, and jumping and firing firearms.
I'm from the Black West.
[laughter]
Don't worry about my guns.
Worry about my chainsaw, and we make moonshine, OK?
But I wanted to bring that culture to film
to help not pontificate to anyone
with filters and fear of me, a woman
walking in a man's shoes.
You know what I'm talking about.
Hey in the blue sweater.
But to let everyone feel comfortable that they--
my grandfather Daddy Ray in my biopic and everything that's
happening, he said, Pammy, I want you to fly ties,
go fishing, bring the boat in.
I want all the girls to be self-sufficient.
And if a woman can do something,
a man will respect you. TREVOR NOAH: Wow.
I love this.
And I've had that.
And so that gave me the courage to fall, get hurt,
but to show that women are just trying
to be the best we can be.
So when you don't come home from a war,
we done cut the grass.
We done paint the house.
We welcome our men, who may not come home.
But we can do it, and you're proud of us.
TREVOR NOAH: That is beautiful.
And you really did create something completely
new and completely different.
In The Plot Thickens, the podcast,
what I love about it is we go through your life
and your journey.
There are few human beings who have lived--
it almost feels like a hundred lives--
It is.
--in one lifetime.
It is.
It's Gumpian, Forrest Gumpian.
TREVOR NOAH: It really is Forrest Gumpian.
This shit got to happen to me?
Come on.
TREVOR NOAH: Are you kidding me?
To be-- the first week I'm off the turnip truck,
literally, I get to sing backup with Bobby Womack.
He says, hey, I have a friend that
is recording tomorrow night.
Now I'm literally sleeping in a garage,
trying to get into film school at UCLA.
OK?
OK, you're going to be singing for-- working
for Sylvester Stewart.
Puddy Cat?
What kind of Sylvester name is that?
OK, OK, I can do it. I can do it.
I sing gospel in Denver.
I play keyboards.
So I go, CBS, and the director-- the manager says,
have you sung with Wonderlove before?
I'm like, Wonderlove?
Stevie Wonder's back-- no, I'm poor, and I live in Colorado.
And I've come out here to go to school.
And he says, OK, well, tell Sylvester.
You want to meet him?
OK, so he walks me up to this big window.
And it's Sly of Sly and the Family Stone.
TREVOR NOAH: Wow.
Fro, bass, you know, jamming.
On drums in the back, Buddy Miles.
He had already started Band of Gypsys.
What?
So I get to sing, go to sleep.
Elevator opens.
Here is three guys in the elevator,
a big, Black dude in the center with a hat,
and two white dudes on the side,
walking down the hallway.
And I'm going, I smell patchouli oil.
TREVOR NOAH: [laughs]
It's Jimi Hendrix.
TREVOR NOAH: What?
And the Band of Gypsys coming to jam
with Sly and the Family Stone.
Where are the tapes? TREVOR NOAH: What?
Yeah, and he goes, (IMITATING HENDRIX) hey--
you know, hey, Buddy, man.
I'm like-- [gasping] I'm like a zombie.
Like, don't be stupid, Pam.
You got-- she can sing.
She's country.
Don't pay any attention to her.
And they started jamming. Where are the tapes?
Come on now.
That's-- I couldn't have planned that.
TREVOR NOAH: Where are the tapes?
Can you imagine? I don't know.
Maybe you can find them.
I feel like every story in your life is this.
Like you said, you grew up in a world where you're poor.
You didn't have much. You come into this world.
You're trying to do something.
You start creating the something.
You're singing with people.
You're going out with legends and icons.
You're becoming friends with them.
You're working with them. You're creating.
And you become the legend and the icon.
I would love to know, when you've
been part of this documentary that looks back on your life--
PAM GRIER: I know.
You know, when we're living life,
oftentimes, we don't take stock of every single thing
that we've experienced.
But when you get to hear it told back to you, when
you get to tell it again, sometimes
you appreciate it even more.
I would love to know, when you look at it again,
what is one of the biggest moments not of success,
but where you go, wow, I cannot believe that I lived through
that moment in my career?
I lived through Richard Pryor.
TREVOR NOAH: Wow.
I really loved him, and he loved me.
He thought I was the funniest bitch around.
[laughter]
TREVOR NOAH: That sounds like something Richard would day.
I made him laugh.
His horse, Ginger, from the Mudbone folklore--
TREVOR NOAH: Yes.
The horse was injured.
And I come from Western stock, horses, and grew up.
The horses saved me and my family.
TREVOR NOAH: Yes.
And I had to take him to the vet.
But I didn't have a truck or a horse trailer.
Richard's in a bathrobe, crying.
He's going to kill every mother-mother-[bleep] around.
And I'm like, no, you don't have to kill anybody.
We're going to put the horse in my Jaguar.
He says, but it's a Jag.
It's a four-door, '76 XJL banana yellow.
TREVOR NOAH: But you're saying you're going
to put the horse in the Jag.
We put the horse in the backseat of the Jag.
I said, I'll go--
I'mma go pulling, and you push, Richard.
We're going to get the horse in the Jaguar.
We get the horse in the Jaguar.
The shocks go boom.
The tires go boom.
And get in the car, Richard, with your ashy ankles
and your bathrobe.
Get in the mother-[bleep] car.
- [laughs] - OK, we get in the car.
We driving down the 405-- - No way.
--to the vet. Yes, way.
And, all of a sudden, like, the car's
fishtailing all over the place with the horse in the back.
And white people saying, there's
two Negroes in the car with a horse in the backseat
of a English car.
It's a Jag!
And we're all-- and they're saying, where's the vet?
Where's the vet? And they said, follow us.
Follow us. And so we've got--
I've got a train of people, choo-choo train,
following us to the vet with the horse
in the back seat to get--
I'm going to save a horse. I'm going to save a life.
TREVOR NOAH: I love that.
And we get there, and Richard said, baby,
you're the funniest bitch I've ever known.
You funnier than me.
Saved your life, and he realized that I loved him.
And I didn't want him to fall off
the wagon because he was trying to get his stuff together.
And I would do anything.
When you really love someone, when you--
you don't abandon people you love.
You abandon people you're using.
TREVOR NOAH: Hmm.
And I never used him.
TREVOR NOAH: What do you think it was about you
that immunized you from a world where-- you've
talked about this in your biography,
and you talked about this in your stories-- so many
of the people around you who were
brilliant-- they were icons. They were changing the world.
They're geniuses.
TREVOR NOAH: They were geniuses,
but they were also addicted to drugs.
Drugs was really destroying who they were.
Many people going into rehab, some never making it out,
and yet you managed to escape so much of that.
What do you think it was about you?
I can't drink gin.
I'm part Native American.
The juniper berry makes my brains--
TREVOR NOAH: Oh.
I remember at my debutante ball, I had a slow gin fizz,
and I was supposed to have it.
And I remember someone said they saw me jumping
off a table in my mom's wedding dress,
fighting, duking it out.
[laughs]
I think because I've had four attacks, one as a child,
and then again at seven, and then 18, and then 20,
I fought family trauma--
many of you know about from my book.
And I found my pain is deep, but my joy is infinite.
And I find such joy in watching these geniuses
escape their genius.
It's scary.
You can't repeat that.
Who's going to play Miles Davis again,
Bitches Brew on a chart?
Who's going to do that?
Nobody.
Who's going to do a lot of the music that's done today,
and it's not being written because it's not going to be
played 40, 50 years from now?
That's genius.
And you have to play it over and over
and over again in your show, every night, or at a concert.
It's-- what do you do?
Take the fear and anxiety away. I can do it.
I create it.
I got to do it again--
eight shows a week.
That's a test for yourself and your discipline.
And you've got this out here.
It's hard to keep it out there.
What genius that you created note by note, bar by bar,
everyone who writes classical music, pages, volumes of it,
it's like, yeah, they're going to do
something because they're going to have to recreate that--
Wow.
--or sell it to someone.
And so when you do that, and when they say, well,
who's going to fill my shoes, I said,
it can be filled because there's
a lot of women that come up to me and say, Pam, thank you.
I was criticized for being a tomboy.
No, you ain't a tomboy.
You're a girly girl, and it's OK.
But just be the best that you can be.
TREVOR NOAH: That's what makes you so legendary is
you forged a path.
You know, you don't know how many
people will be inspired by it.
And now you're there on the other end,
tying it up again, forging the path for the next Pam Grier.
Thank you so much for joining me on the show.
Thank you for being here.
Congratulations on the story, on your biopic, on your life.
We appreciate you so much.
Pam Grier, everybody.