http://www.vulture.com/20...rince.html

Excerpt:

On December 4, 2013, I was sitting around a conference table on the Fox lot getting notes on the table draft of New Girl episode 315 — an episode that we had been working on almost nonstop for a month, an episode that would star, unbelievably, Prince. Someone handed me some dumplings — at least I think they were dumplings; listen, in all honesty, they may have been some kind of Asian-fusion buns. I picked one up, took a bite, and then saw my phone ringing with a number I didn’t recognize, from Minnesota. I answered it, mid-dumpling.

“Hew-wo?”

“Hello, I have Prince for you.”

I stood up suddenly, like a guest at a wedding seeing the bride appear. I banged my knee. I dropped the dumpling. I made insane gestures to the people around me. I ran outside. “Hello, this is Prince.”

His voice was … I don’t need to tell you what his voice was like. Soft. Strong. A whisper that sounded like it was booming out over a loudspeaker. He spoke, and the street I was standing on opened up. It’s possible I was having a full-on panic attack. I don’t know what I said. I talked just to talk, like some sweet kid in a war movie who was about to get blown up on the battlefield (“I can’t feel my legs, Sarge, am I okay? Tell Ma I love her.”). I said things like “it’s an honor” and “huge fan” because it seemed like the kind of thing I was supposed to say. But I knew, all the way in Minnesota, Prince could tell he was speaking to a person who had, moments ago, spit a dumpling out of her mouth.

The truth is, I had no idea why Prince had agreed to guest-star on New Girl. I was told he loved the show, that it was one of the few shows he watched. How could that be true? We weren’t cool enough for Prince — we did an entire episode about someone leaving a wet towel in the bathroom. A very real part of me felt that this was a prank some mean girls from middle school had spent 15 years concocting. I had also been told that Prince was known to back out of things at the last moment if he was unhappy. My interactions until this call had been with a manager, though I could sometimes tell what was coming directly from Prince in forwarded emails because of the way he spelled words: Letters were mostly capitalized. Numbers replaced letters whenever possible. 2Day. 2Morrow. An email from Prince was like a message that had been beamed down from a party in space by a robot whose job it was to communicate during all space parties.