Nia Long has plenty of stories from her decades in Hollywood, but one memory she shared this week stands out for its mix of humor and surprise—and it involves none other than the late, great Prince.
During her recent appearance on The Jennifer Hudson Show on Monday, October 27, Long opened up about an encounter with the late music icon that she didn’t realize was happening until it was too late.
“I was at Roxbury back in the day and I had on my Kenneth Cole pumps—I remember!” Long recalled. “We were walking out of the club and this guy tries to grab my hand. And I’m like, ‘I’m from Brooklyn, don’t be grabbing me, touching on me!’”
Her reaction was immediate and firm, but her friend quickly set her straight. “We get outside and my girlfriend was like, ‘Girl, you know that was Prince!’” By the time Long and her friend ran back inside to try to spot him, the “Purple Rain” star had already slipped away.
The moment likely happened in the early-to-mid ’90s, when Prince was a regular fixture at Los Angeles nightspots. For Long, it became one of those stories that stuck—a reminder that even a global superstar could move quietly in a crowd.
But the story didn’t end there. “There’s a happy ending,” she told Hudson. Nearly 20 years later, Long’s girlfriend threw her a birthday party and invited Prince. “I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, Prince is at my birthday party!’” Long said. “I sit next to Prince and I’m having this whole flashback about being in the club… and he wanted to talk about my hair all night.”
According to Long, Prince was fascinated by her hair routine—asking about products and stylists instead of music or Hollywood. “I’ll take what I can get,” Long laughed. “It’s Prince. I was like, whatever you want—we can buy hair, makeup, skincare, whatever you want.”