MEL BROOKS SAYS HE WAS SPURRED ON BY RICHARD PRYOR TO USE NIGGER IN BLAZING SADDLES

Entertainment Weekly

 

Mel Brooks says he was 'spurred on' by Richard Pryor to use N-word in Blazing Saddles

By Wesley Stenzel  January 17, 2026 7:00 p.m. ET

 

Mel Brooks is reflecting on Richard Pryor's impact on Blazing Saddles.

 

The Young Frankenstein director, who co-wrote the iconic Western spoof with the legendary standup comedian, explained how the boundary-pushing movie came to include so many uses of the N-word.

 

"I was spurred on by Richard," Brooks says in the documentary Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man (out Jan. 22). "He said, 'You gotta tell the truth.'"

 

Brooks explains that Pryor told him about the wide range of applications for the slur. "He said, 'It's used; sometimes it's used sweetly by brothers, and sometimes it's just a vicious, terrible curse, which breaks your heart,'" he recalls Pryor saying.

 

The Spaceballs filmmaker took Pryor's advice to heart, but didn't want audiences to assume that he was the reason the movie contained so many N-words.

 

"I said, 'Well, I'm gonna tell the world — I'm gonna tell them the truth — I'm gonna tell them it's your fault that there are so many N-words used in this movie,'" Brooks says in the doc.

 

Brooks said that the movie, which features numerous racist characters using slurs to refer to Cleavon Little's Sheriff Bart, has a lasting legacy thanks to its lampooning of racism.

 

"If you want a comedy to last, you have to have an engine driving it, and in Blazing Saddles, racial prejudice is the engine that really drives the film," he says

 

The documentary also features commentary from Ben Stiller, who remains flabbergasted that Blazing Saddles was able to be produced with so much provocative content, and says that his own film, Tropic Thunder, pales in comparison to the audacity of Brooks' movie.

 

"Now you look at it, and you're like, 'Oh my God, this movie,'" Stiller reflects. "You know, people like to say, 'Oh, you couldn't make Tropic Thunder today,' like, you really couldn't make Blazing Saddles today, or ever, I think? But what's behind it, what you realize is like, he's doing this satire, but he's really going for it, trying to expose the hypocrisy and how screwed up our world is in terms of how people treat other people."

 

Dave Chappelle also appears in the documentary, and shares his own perspective on Blazing Saddles. "Man, you can do damn near anything if it's funny," he says. "So no, most people can't make that movie ever, today or even back then. But Mel Brooks could."

 

Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man premieres on HBO Max on Thursday, Jan. 22.