Leslie Jones says that Prince once mistook her for Chris Rock backstage at 'Saturday Night Live'
- Leslie Jones said that Prince once mistook her for Chris Rock.
- The encounter took place when Jones was working on "Saturday Night Live."
Leslie Jones said that during Prince's appearance on "Saturday Night Live," the late legendary artist once mistook her for Chris Rock.
In her new memoir "Leslie F*cking Jones," Jones reflects on her life and career, including the time she spent working on NBC's "SNL." Jones recounted "losing her shit" for Bruno Mars and Katy Perry, but her Prince encounter was incredibly memorable.
"I'll never forget Prince being on SNL; at one point he saw me on the side of the stage and because the room was dark, he thought I was Chris Rock," Jones wrote. "I know that because he called me Chris Rock."
Rock and Jones are indeed close friends: As she recounts in the memoir, he was the one who got her an audition for "Saturday Night Live" after personally recommending her to series creator Lorne Michaels. In a recent interview with People, Jones said that Rock was "like my brother."
In her most recent Netflix special "Leslie Jones: Time Machine," Jones tells an extended anecdote about one of her friends getting her tickets to a Grammys after-party when she was in her 20s. As Jones recounts, she occupied herself with trying to seduce Prince at the party by performing an elaborate dance routine to his song "Gett Off" — that is, until her ponytail flew off mid-dance.
Jones said that she wanted to tell Prince the story when he came to "Saturday Night Live." Still though, there was the problem of mistaken identity.
"I think that when I was talking to him, he thought I was Chris Rock," she says in the special. "I was like, 'Do you think you're talking to Chris Rock?'"