And Finally Artist News

Zooey Dechannel thought Prince’s offer to cameo in New Girl was a “prank”

By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 11 April 2018

Hey, you remember when Prince was in an episode of ‘New Girl’ five years ago and everyone was like, “Huh, that was weird”. Turns out it was quite weird, as the show’s star Zooey Deschanel has now confirmed.

Appearing on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ to promote the seventh and final season of the show, Deschanel said of working with Prince: “I was actually the first person to get an email about him wanting to be on the show. I got a cold email from his manager, and it was like the most on-brand Prince email – like too on-brand. It was like, ‘Hello, I am manager to legendary artist Prince. He is loving the show ‘New Girl’. He would like 2 B’ – you know, like, 2 B – ‘on the show’. And I’m like, ‘This has to be a prank. There’s no way!'”

“I had several people check it out [and] it turned out it was his manager”, she goes on. “You know, you never know. When you put stuff out there, you’re in the entertainment business, you never know who might just be flipping channels and find your show. And randomly, Prince found the show, and he was watching it every week with his band, and they’d watch it on tour, and it was like he couldn’t miss it, and they were really invested in the Nick and Jess relationship. It was just one of those really surreal moments”.

Still, even though it was confirmed not to be a prank and everything was formally booked, she said that “to the very last second, we were not sure if he was going to come to set”.

“We had no back-up plan”, she added. “[But] he showed up. He was awesome. He was such a pro. [He was] a good actor and very kind of chill all the time. Such a cool guy”.