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Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories: Prince
The setup
The premise
Here’s the bit.
In this installment of Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories, Charlie Murphy remembers a night in 1985, at the height of Purple Rain, when Prince arrived at a club with his entourage, including Shalamar guitarist Micki Free, and invited Eddie Murphy and his crew back to his house to hear music. Bored at the house, Prince (Dave Chappelle) challenges Charlie's friends to a game of basketball against himself and the Revolution, who take the court in the same ruffled club clothes. Charlie mocks the matchup as shirts against blouses, but Prince turns out to be a dazzling player who dribbles past, rebounds over and taunts the bigger men on the way to a lopsided win. Afterward Prince serves his beaten guests pancakes, and Charlie insists to doubters that every word of the story is true.
The funny people
Meet the cast. 5
Say it with us
Highly quotable.
Shoot the J. Shoot it!
Why don't you purify yourself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka?
Game. Blouses.
He took us in the house and served us pancakes.
Behind the scenes
The people who made it.
A little extra
Notes from the archive.
Prince later confirmed the basketball story in an MTV interview, and he used an image of Chappelle dressed as Prince for the cover of his single "Breakfast Can Wait".
Script
Automatically generated script; wording may contain errors. Speaker labels are inferred.
- 00:03
Charlie Murphy
I can recall another one, like, you know, I think it was in 85, like, when all that androgynous s*** was going on, and what was wild was that the guy who looked the most like a b***h was getting all the women. Even I had the jerry curls coming out, and I had my s*** stick to the side and all that. If you're wearing baggy s*** now and you're acting hard, if you from L.A., you motherf***ers just wearing some s***.
- 00:31
Charlie Murphy
We in the club, we gettin' our groove on, shakin' it up. And Prince came in, and that's when Purple Rain came out, and Prince was the , you know what I'm sayin'? Prince had on like a, it was like a Zorro-type outfit. He had the ruffles that come down in the front. He had the big perms plucked out, you know what I mean? And the mustache that was drawn on his face.
- 00:56
Charlie Murphy
and it looked like it's something that a figure skater would wear and he's with his whole crew and he had this other cat named Mickey free and Mickey free was like the new cat in Shalimar that when he joined a group I heard mad cats like yo Shalimar got a new new girl in there man that bitch fine like a mump they was talking about Mickey free okay Mickey free is not a girl alright
- 01:22
Charlie Murphy
they came over where we we was at, Prince started talking to my brother.
- 01:27
Prince
Hello, Eddie Murphy.
- 01:29
Speaker 1
Prince, what's up?
- 01:30
Prince
I'm a big fan of your comedies.
- 01:32
Ooh, that's hot.
- 01:33
Prince
Would you like to come to my house and listen to some music?
- 01:36
Speaker 1
Ooh, that's cool.
- 01:37
Prince
Fruity, get the car. Assemble your crew. I'll be outside.
- 01:46
Charlie Murphy
We went up there. We get there, he puts the tracks on. The tracks were slamming. You know what I mean? We were listening to the music and everything, grooving at the crib. They had girls over there. He had a nice environment. It was tight.
- 02:00
Prince
This bores me. Is anyone up for a game of basketball?
- 02:11
Prince
How about you and your friends versus me and the revolution?
- 02:20
Charlie Murphy
So I was like, this nigga must be joking, man. I don't know. I don't know where he's going with this.
- 02:25
Charlie Murphy
He was dead serious. He had his, uh, helper or whatever ever go and get some like shorts and sneakers and gave them to us and laughing
- 02:34
Charlie Murphy
I'm like this is gonna be funny as so they come out right and I look at them you know they still got on the same thing about
- 02:50
Charlie Murphy
playing ball and that but they were you know what the shirts against the blouse
- 02:59
Charlie Murphy
and when I said that this look came on his face and I'm looking back at him thinking to myself you know what are you angry about I mean you know where you got that shirt from the damn show wasn't the men's department
- 03:17
Charlie Murphy
I mean I kind of learned something that they don't never judge a book by its cover this cat could ball man.
- 03:25
Prince
Play ball.
- 03:26
Charlie Murphy
He was crossing cats. He was getting rebounds like Charles Barker.
- 03:39
Charlie Murphy
Snatch me the damn.
- 03:40
Prince
Shoot the J. Shoot it!
- 03:43
Prince
Run a play. Computer blue. Darling picky.
- 03:49
Charlie Murphy
They was kind of setting these fruity picks man, you know what I'm saying? Like you be trying to check prints and then you got this cat standing behind you and he's getting close to you and his hands is out like this you don't really want to be bent over in front of a cat like that you know what I'm saying? Prince is incredible.
- 04:12
Charlie Murphy
We got a tower man it's kind of hot out here man.
- 04:15
Prince
Why don't you purify yourself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka?
- 04:20
Prince
Good. In your face Charlie Murphy. Good.
- 04:25
Prince
Good hustle.
- 04:27
Charlie Murphy
yo man i'm not on your team
- 04:29
Charlie Murphy
i mean it wasn't even like it was close it was a landslide victory
- 04:45
Prince
game blouses
- 04:46
Charlie Murphy
i was there i seen it you don't believe me you think i'm making it up you think i'm trying to uh you know enhance the story because i'm involved and try to give myself up an excuse to lose him because I'm telling you a story about Prince.
- 05:03
Charlie Murphy
I dare you to challenge Prince to a game of ball one-on-one. Challenge him, all right? And make sure your people is there to see the game because you might get embarrassed. Trust me.
- 05:19
Speaker 2
All right, he beat you in basketball and then what happened?
- 05:22
Charlie Murphy
After it was all over, he took us in the house to serve this pancake.
- 05:27
Charlie Murphy
Well, I gotta admit, um, it's a good game.
- 05:38
Prince
I wish I could say the same for you and your crew of flunkies. Do you guys want some grapes?
- 05:46
Charlie Murphy
I mean, you know, there's some great storytellers in the world that we live in today, man.
- 05:50
Prince
Bitches.
- 05:51
Charlie Murphy
can make up that .
The rabbit hole continues
One more couldn’t hurt.
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