Hannah Simone has said that Prince once agreed to a cameo on New Girl because he had a “crush” on her.
In the episode, which was broadcast in February 2014, Zooey Deschanel’s character Jess is invited to one of Prince’s mansion parties with her best friend Cece (Simone).
The rest of the regular cast – Nick (Jake Johnson), Schmidt (Max Greenfield), Winston (Lamorne Morris) and Coach (Damon Wayans Jr) – then gatecrash the party. The group then watch Prince play part of his song ‘Fallinlove2nite’.
Speaking on her rewatch podcast The Mess Around with Hannah and Lamorne, Simone said: “He [Prince] tried for a very long time to find a way to be in the same room together.
“I was not interested in that way. Love a Prince song. Happy to put on a Prince record. I was not interested in anything else. So I was never in the same room with Prince. And then yeah, he was like a teenage boy who showed up at my job, which was really funny.”
She went on to detail a scene where the late singer-songwriter asked to play ping-pong with the actress.
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“Apparently with people that he really likes to have that quality time with, he liked to play ping-pong,” Simone said.
“It was like 5 in the morning, they had to write in the tag [to play over the end credits], because how were they going to incorporate ping-pong into the show? And they had to write this tag where Prince would get his request, which was: He wanted to play ping-pong with me.”
She continued: “They saved it as the last thing that we shot, because they were low-key scared that if we shot that early, he would be – he’s Prince. So he could be like, ‘OK, I’m gonna go now.’ And so we saved it for the end. And the thing that I’ll never [forget] is: I don’t play ping-pong, I’m not a good ping-pong player. I was so tired. It had been a 20-something hour day, and I just slammed the shot.
“My body just went like, ‘We’re doing it.’ And then he was like – he genuinely did walk off, which was really funny.”
Elsewhere, it was announced earlier this summer that a long-awaited Prince documentary has been blocked and is said to be “dead in the water” after multiple disputes.
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