Inside the Making of Prince ‘New Girl’ Episode (Excerpt)

During its third season, Fox’s hit comedy New Girl welcomed an unexpected guest star for episode 14: Prince. And the surprise moment for fans was also news to the cast and crew.

In Who’s That Girl: The Untold, Definitive History of New Girl (July 28; St. Martin’s Publishing Group) by Thea Glassman, the cast and creative team reflect and offer a deep dive into the episode centered on their special guest star, appropriately titled “Prince.”

When series star Zooey Deschanel got an email from Prince’s rep stating that he wanted to be on the show, the actress initially thought it was a prank. But it wasn’t, and Prince’s appearance would give the show a new life after a rocky season that included the controversial storyline of Max Greenfield’s Schmidt two-timing love interests Cece (Hannah Simone) and Elizabeth (Merritt Wever), and what would come next after Deschanel’s Jess and Jake Johnson’s Nick finally became romantically involved.

“Liz Meriwether stepped up to become showrunner and she was struggling to handle all her characters’ big moves. Adding to the pressure was a downward ratings trend and Fox’s mandate to make the show appeal to more men. With Prince’s magical touch, it ended up being an episode as iconic as its guest star,” the publisher teases of the poignant episode.

For Who’s That Girl, Glassman “takes readers behind the scenes with in-depth interviews with creator Liz Meriwether and the creative team, telling the story of how a scrappy, offbeat pilot evolved into a streaming juggernaut” that starred Deschanel, Johnson, Greenfield, Simone, Lamorne Morris and Damon Wayans Jr.

Though the series welcomed a myriad of guest stars including Taylor Swift, Megan Fox, Olivia Munn, Justin Long, Dermot Mulroney, Jamie Lee Curtis, the late Rob Reiner and more, it was Prince whose guest starring role became one of the series’ most watched episodes.

Ahead of the book’s publication, The Hollywood Reporter exclusively shares an excerpt, with accompanying audio, of the cast and creative team detailing Prince’s hands-on approach for his role from the wardrobe and production design to scriptwriting and directing. New Girl cast member Nelson Franklin is narrating a portion of the audiobook, in excerpts also shared by THR below.

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The email came out of the blue. It arrived in Deschanel’s inbox and read, “Hello, I am the manager for the legendary artist Prince and he wants to be on New Girl.”

“Am I being pranked?” she thought to herself and forwarded the email to her agent. “Can you vet this? Is this real?” she asked.

Turns out, it was no joke. Prince really did want to guest star on the show. Meriwether knew he was a longtime fan of New Girl — he would allegedly watch episodes while on the road — and had offered him a cameo in the episode “Virgins,” playing the rock star Cece loses her virginity to. He turned that one down. (The material, the showrunner suspected, was too racy.) But now, here he was, offering himself up, a beacon of hope in a season that had proved to be so exhaustingly thorny.

Season Three had gotten off to a bumpy start. Nick and Jess were finally together, presenting Meriwether with the challenges of navigating the definitive end to their biggest will-they, won’t-they storyline. Audiences had not responded well to Schmidt’s two-timing Cece and Elizabeth, and a dark cloud hovered around the network’s growing frustration over New Girl’s slipping ratings.

Meriwether got to work on a pitch for Prince’s team. The idea went as follows: all the characters attend a party at the singer’s house and he ends up being the one responsible for Nick and Jess saying “I love you” to each other the first time. Prince liked the idea of helping Jess share her feelings with Nick, and writers Rob Rosell and Dave Feeney started writing a script. The episode would be slotted after the Super Bowl, a coveted spot with maximum eyeballs. This could be an incredible chance to reinvigorate the audience while introducing new fans to the show.

Rosell and Feeney’s story begins with Jess and Cece scoring an invite to Prince’s mansion, a joyous event that’s thrown to a screeching halt when Nick unexpectedly tells Jess he loves her. Taken aback, Jess pulls out two finger guns and points them at him as the car pulls away toward the party. (This was, perhaps, an homage to Johnson’s own love of improvising finger guns on set—nothing made him prouder than getting a finger gun on television.)

Nick, Schmidt, Coach and Winston manage to sneak into the mansion, with Nick desperately trying to make things right with Jess, who is now fully freaking out. When the two find one another at the party and try to sort through their issues, an unexpected figure appears before them in the garden.

“Hi,” he says, taking off his very chic pair of moon-shaped shades. “I’m Prince. So what seems to be the problem?”

The New Girl crew rented a mansion in Altadena, scheduling four shooting nights there. The Friday before the singer was set to arrive, a production meeting was held in O’Malley’s office for final preparations. First assistant director Michael Risoli was feeling confident about their schedule—they had diligently maneuvered timings so that the cast and crew would have the mandated hours required for both work and rest. They were almost ready to start shooting and sets had been built. This was the most expensive episode of New Girl they had ever budgeted.

With those ducks in order, the most challenging part seemed to be over.

“Okay,” Risoli told everybody. “We’re ready to do this.”

“Okay, good, good,” Kasdan, the show’s executive producer, said, before turning to O’Malley. “Do we think Prince is actually going to show up?”

Risoli was startled. Why wouldn’t he show up?

It turned out that Prince was known to back out of obligations last minute if he was unhappy. There had already been an anxiety-producing close call for Meriwether, when he almost quit after discovering that the script featured Jess and Nick saying “I love you” after they returned from his party. That wasn’t what he had signed up for. He was there to help make that special moment happen for them.

Meriwether managed to wrangle him back in with a script rewrite, but the question mark remained if he might get spooked again. They began discussing what they might do if, come shooting day, he didn’t show up. Fred Armisen, who impersonated Prince on Saturday Night Live, had done a hilarious job when he subbed in for the star during a table read for the episode. As Risoli remembers it, the group began toying with the idea of him filling in just in case they were ghosted.

So much work had gone into the episode. Prince had very specific, detailed instructions, which everyone — from cast to crew — were carefully trying to follow. Deschanel was doing fittings every night after work, trying to find a look for Jess that the singer liked. They’d send Prince photos, to which he’d reply, “Not that, not that.” Finally, Deschanel remembers, Meriwether got a call on set and handed the phone over. It was Prince on the other line.

“I want you to look like Stevie Nicks,” he told her.

Oh! Okay. That made sense. A box from a store in Minneapolis that he loved arrived. Inside was a crushed ombre dress with ribbons and feathers, which Jess would wear when she tells Nick she loves him for the first time. Prince also brought his own clothes for Jess to model during a fashion montage in the episode. His petite stature allowed Deschanel to easily slip into each one.

Production designer Michael Whetstone was looped in to discuss what the look and feel of the fake Prince’s house would be. “We’re going to put you in touch with Prince’s people,” he was told and a detailed correspondence sprung up between himself and Theo London, chief of staff, tour manager and a direct line to Prince. They discussed everything from the location to the furniture that would go inside the mansion. The singer was also heavily involved in what art was hung on his bedroom walls — asking that everything be by an artist he liked named Stella Blu. Drawings of eggs featuring his poetry were created at his request. The singer, Whetstone realized, had taken on the role of showrunning his own episode.

When the first day of shooting arrived, the general feeling hanging over that grand Altadena mansion was exhaustion, nerves and excitement. Johnson, who normally hated having anything put on his eyes, had begrudgingly agreed to allow Douglass and Glaser to apply eyeliner for a flashback that showed teenage Nick singing “1999.” If it was for Prince, fine.

A number of familiar faces were invited to make appearances at the party, including baseball player Clayton Kershaw and supermodel Alessandra Ambrosio. Kris Jenner and Khloé Kardashian were also there, two last-minute additions who Meriwether thought could make for funny appearances in the episode. Schmidt would approach Jenner to ask her how he should build his brand.

When the news reached Prince’s team that a Kardashian would be in attendance, the New Girl crew was told, in no uncertain terms, that the singer would not show up. As Risoli remembers it, the singer didn’t like Kim Kardashian.

Panic set in on set. A decision was made to shoot the scene anyway and not put it in the show. If the New Girl crew was asked about it later, they’d plead ignorance. “We can’t just tell them ‘no,’ ” Risoli remembers saying. “They’ll be insulted.”

He approached Jenner.

“Kris, we’re going to shoot this really fast, we shoot these things fast, we’ll get you in and out of here,” he told her. “Your car is going to be waiting for you out there, we’ll get you into the car and out.”

Risoli remembers Jenner being totally fine with that — she was used to shooting scenes fast on their reality show.

They set up the shot, with cinematographer Russ T. Alsobrook barely lighting the scene. “Max,” Risoli said ahead of time, signaling to Greenfield, who had been looped into the whole drama. “Do the fast version.” Roughly forty-five minutes later, the scene was done.

“That’s it?” Risoli remembers Jenner asking.

“That’s it!” he responded. “It was really good.”

As soon as the duo walked out the door, all script pages that featured the Kardashian scene were ripped away and thrown in a trash can. Just as the last ones were being tossed out, Prince arrived. They were safe — likely having heart palpitations, but safe. Phones were sealed into baggies, per the singer’s request, and it was time to start shooting.

Most of the cast and crew were too shy to talk to the singer. Even Meriwether avoided conversations with him, fearful that she would say the wrong thing. But almost every person I spoke to had their own memorable, deeply odd stories from those long nights spent with Prince.

Among them:

He brought his own Ping-Pong paddle and challenged anyone to a match — most of the crew played him and he beat everyone. Fifty vanilla-scented candles were delivered to his room. When Johnson, as Nick, let out a high-pitched scream at first sight of him, he burst into laughter. He was so committed to creating a party that felt authentically like his own that he sent the New Girl’s music department a list of songs that he would actually have playing, including “After the Love Has Gone” by Earth, Wind & Fire and “We’re Gettin’ Too Close” by the Soul Children.

Many, many people shared that he had a big crush on Simone, which was a significant factor in his decision to do the show. The two had one scene together at the very end of the shoot and, in one of the best and most random moments of the episode, a butterfly follows a furious Prince out of the room after he loses to Cece in Ping-Pong. (Men would frequently try to flirt with Simone, including Kobe Bryant when he stopped by the set one day, director Fred Goss recalled. But the actress just wanted to focus on her work. She’d go home after shooting, sit on her balcony, have a glass of wine, and memorize her lines for the next day.)

It would be Risoli’s job as first assistant director to interact with Prince frequently throughout shooting. The singer spoke in a soft whisper and would continuously call for Risoli when he had an idea for a scene. “Mike,” he said in hushed tones, waving a hand. Risoli hunched down, ear pressed closer, to hear his soft sliver of a voice. “What’s the director’s name again?” he asked. Risoli responded, “Fred.” He pointed to Rosell. “Who’s that?”

“Oh, that’s Rob, our head writer.”

“I have an idea. Can you get me a long lighter?” Prince asked. He had a pitch for the team, which would involve flicking a lighter in a scene when he and Jess are alone in a dark closet together. He thought it would be funnier than using a flashlight, as originally scripted.

A little while later—another whisper of Risoli’s name. “Can I talk to you for a second?” Prince said. “For the performance tomorrow…”

Risoli immediately tried to quell any concerns that the singer might have. “We’re all ready. I’ve got a crane coming in here. They all signed NDAs. We have extra security. …” Turns out, that wasn’t what Prince was interested in.

“Can you get me a bullhorn?” he asked.

The singer’s performance was coming up and he had another prop idea. Risoli tracked down the requested bullhorn, and on that final night of shooting, Prince did something uniquely special. Unprompted and right before he was about to perform his big musical number for the crowd, he pulled out that horn and asked, “Anyone want to fall in love tonight?” The crowd of two hundred extras cheered. Deschanel performed alongside him, and Johnson, Wayans Jr., Greenfield and Simone were up there with them, dancing their hearts out on a stage bathed in blue lights. In that moment, Greenfield completely forgot about the show or his character or acting. He was just feeling it all, dancing near the legend, a big, wide grin on his face.

Ahead of directing the “Prince” episode, Goss had heard stories about the singer’s unreliable tendencies. Once, he was told, Prince was doing a commercial and simply walked off stage in the middle of it. The director had diligently mapped out how he could shoot all his coverage of the singer’s performance in three efficient takes — letting Prince know ahead of time exactly what to expect.

“Well,” Goss remembers Prince saying, “is that going to be enough?”

“I mean,” he responded. “If it has to be, yes. …”

“Let’s just do it till we get it.”

So many of the crew members made the trek to Altadena that night and huddled off camera to watch Prince perform. Associate producer Megan Mascena had been working since 8 a.m. but there she was, too. After the first take, she remembers, they all looked at each other. “Holy shit, that was Prince!” Sometimes, she told me, you plan something to death, but it still doesn’t come out the way you hoped. This time, it was perfect.

Risoli headed onstage and called out, “We got it, we got it!” He gave Greenfield and Johnson a big high five and then looked up and saw Prince. The singer was sitting there, with a little smile on his face and his hand held halfway up. He wanted a high five, too.

If New Girl needed a win amid a rocky season, they got it with their “Prince” episode. It pulled in twenty-six million viewers, more than double the pilot, making it the most watched episode of the series. AV Club’s Erik Adams declared that “Prince” was one of Season Three’s “most consistently hilarious episodes.”

The episode served as a morale boost of sorts for Greenfield, who, after three years on New Girl, could feel the series losing its blooming popularity. “You’re on network television, you don’t always feel like you’re on the coolest show or you’re doing the coolest job,” he told GQ. “And forever, because he did our show, you can’t ever say that our show is uncool or what we did was cheesy in any way. It’s like, ‘Fuck you, man. Prince did our show.’ ”

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From Who’s That Girl: The Untold, Definitive History of New Girl by Thea Glassman. Copyright © 2026 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

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