Richard Pryor had no problems killing on stage — but getting through “Moby-Dick” was a different story.

According to a new book, “Becoming Richard Pryor” (Harper), the legendary stand-up enlisted the help of “Foxy Brown” star Pam Grier to get him through the Herman Melville door-stopper.

Pryor and the stunning blaxploitation actress began dating on the set of 1977’s “Greased Lightning.” On a trip to Barbados, he confessed to her that “with his eighth-grade education, it was hard for him to read fluently,” author Scott Saul writes in the book.

So he asked her to coach him.

“I heard that ‘War and Peace’ is the hardest motherf–kin’ novel to read,” he told her. “I’m gonna read it. If I can’t read it, it’s so damned big, at least I can kill someone with it. Use it as a weapon.”

Pryor’s newfound interest in the classics led him to sign up for a number of literary adaptations — but the relationship with Grier ­fizzled fast.

“I was put off by how much I thought Pam believed that stardom belonged to her,” he said. “In my head, there was one Numero Uno, and it wasn’t her.”

The book, out Tuesday, chronicles Pryor’s drug use, sex life (he was married seven times and was openly bisexual) and tormented childhood.

It’s the second biography released this year about the comedy legend, who died in 2005 at the age of 65.