Eddie Murphy has revealed his side of the famous basketball story with Prince.

The legend - made famous by Eddie’s brother Charlie Murphy during a famous sketch on Chapelle’s Show - goes something like this: After a night on the town with Prince, the Murphys and their entourage were challenged to a game of pickup basketball against the Purple One. Prince’s team dominated, then celebrated with pancakes for everyone.

“That is totally and absolutely accurate,” Eddie Murphy confirmed during an appearance on the Tonight Show. Murphy revealed many unique details of that night while recalling the experience to host Jimmy Fallon.

“We had on club clothes and Prince had on that outfit that was in the ‘Kiss’ video. He had the little short shirt and the leather jacket with the buttons and stuff. He had that outfit on with a little gold chain around his waist. A wasitlet, I think,” Murphy remembered from that night.

My brother said, ‘Alright, it’s gonna be shirts against blouses,” the comedian recalled. “The blouses won. They beat the shit out of us.”

In hindsight, Murphy light-heartedely insinuated that Prince may have sabotaged his team.

“We had one dude on our squad that could play named Larry. And he didn’t have no shoes so Prince gave him some sneakers. And Prince wore maybe two, three sizes smaller than Larry. But Larry was so excited to have Prince’s sneakers on, he put the tiny sneakers on his feet so he couldn’t do his game right,” Murphy recalled through laughter. “He couldn’t execute so we lost. The one dude who could play, Prince’s shoes shut him down.”

Murphy’s reverence for Prince was obvious throughout his Tonight Show interview, the comedian at one point describing the musician as a “genius.”

His appreciation for the Purple One goes back decades, as evidenced by this 1983 interview with British television promoting his then-new film Trading Places. When asked if he’d want to trade places with anyone on Earth, Murphy responded, “I would like to be Prince one night … I’d like to be him one night. I think all entertainers want to be like, any entertainer wants to be a rock star."

 

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