Prince’s legendary guest appearance on New Girl was inspired by his admiration for star Hannah Simone.
On her podcast The Mess Around, Simone and the show’s costume designer, Debra McGuire, revealed that the ‘Purple Rain’ icon’s 2014 cameo happened because he had a crush on ‘our little Hannah.’
“Yeah,” the Not Dead Yet star, 44, admitted. “He tried for a very long time to find a way to be in the same room together.”
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Simone, who played Cece Parekh on New Girl, however indicated that she was not interested in Prince ‘in that way.’
“Love a Prince song. Happy to put on a Prince record. I was not interested in anything else,” Simone explained. “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.”
Simone revealed that the scene where her character plays ping-pong with Prince, featured during the episode’s credits, was the seven-time Grammy winner’s idea, as reported by PEOPLE.
“Apparently with people that he really likes to have that quality time with, he liked to play ping-pong,” she said. “It was like five in the morning, they had to write in the tag — ’cause 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.”
Prince’s love of ping-pong was well-known. Author Steven Hyden noted in his 2016 book that the pop star once challenged Michael Jackson to a game.
After Prince’s death that same year, Jimmy Fallon recalled the singer beating him at ping-pong.
Simone recounted that the ping-pong scene on New Girl was the last shot of the episode, as the crew feared Prince would leave after getting his ‘quality time’ with her.
