New Girl star Jake Johnson has revealed Prince’s three favourite shows, when looking back at the icon’s appearance on the show.
The ‘Purple Rain’ singer appeared on a 2014 episode of the sitcom, playing himself, after requesting to appear on the show due to being a big fan. In a new interview with The Guardian, Johnson, who played Nick in the comedy, recalled how he would discuss sport and TV for hours on set, and how the artist would only refer to the actor by his character’s name.
“I grew up loving Prince. We would take road trips from Chicago just to listen to his music in Minneapolis,” he recalled. “So I thought, I’m going to show this man respect. I’m not going to be weird. And then I heard him say, ‘I’d like to meet Nick now.’ And he was so great.”
As for the TV classics he liked to talk about, Johnson said: “Cheers, Roseanne and New Girl. Those were his three shows.”
New Girl ran from 2011 to 2018, while Johnson went on to star in the animated Spider-Verse movies as Peter Parker, as well appearing in movies such as The Mummy and Jurassic World. Cheers ran for 11 seasons from 1982 to 1993 and followed the misadventures of a Boston bar. Its series finale was the most watched single TV episode of the ’90s, and led to the spin-off Frasier.
Roseanne initially ran from 1988 to 1997, and told the story of a working class family from Illinois. The sitcom was revived in 2018, although controversial tweets from star Roseanne Barr led to her being written out of the show, and the series continuing as the spin-off The Connors from 2018 to 2025.
Prince passed away on April 21, 2016, aged 57. A press release from the Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office in Anoka County on June 2 of that year ruled the cause of death as being an accidental overdose of fentanyl.
Last month, it was announced that an album of rare and unreleased tracks from the Prince vault would be released, led by the new single ‘Stone’.
Elsewhere, New Girl creator Liz Meriwether was announced as the writer of a new biopic about Britney Spears, based on the pop star’s memoir The Woman In Me.