Zooey Deschanel Talks Prince Collaboration

Zooey Deschanel wouldn’t call Prince her “bud” — how any mere mortal gets to that level with the Purple One is beyond us – but the New Girl star spoke about her budding artistic relationship with the beloved musician in a new interview with The Associated Press. “He is incredibly nice and so generous and just so talented — a really wonderful person and I feel lucky to know him,” she said.

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The two met when Prince made a guest appearance as himself on a recent episode of New Girl. After offering Deschanel’s character relationship advice (and making her pancakes and schooling her in ping pong), the pair performed a brand new song “FALLINLOVE2NITE,” which Prince later released as a full track.

“It’s cool because I make records with [indie-folk duo] She & Him,” Deschanel said. “We’ve made four records, but we’ve never been a pop band. The Prince thing was almost by accident, because [producers] said we’d like it if Jess goes up and sings with Prince, so I did a vocal for the sound department. They sent it to Prince, and the next day they’d mixed that vocal in… and then they released it! It’s so exciting.”

As if working with Prince wasn’t enough, Deschanel also spoke about her upcoming movie, Rock the Kasbah, which finds her sharing the screen with Bruce Willis and Bill Murray. “It’s about a failing music manager who goes to Afghanistan and discovers a young talent,” Deschanel explained, “and she goes onto be on ‘Afghan Idol,’ which is like ‘American Idol,’ and I play like a fun character role in the beginning.”

For all the dedicated Jess and Nick worshippers out there, Deschanel also addressed the future of the couple’s relationship on New Girl: “When they got us together last year, I knew that they had to break up,” she said. “But I knew that once we got them together, you need to pay your dues and have them together long enough that for evermore it will be the ghost that haunts these people. I think that makes for a really interesting fourth season and I’m really excited to get into that, because I think now is where it gets interesting.”