As the world continues to mourn for the legendary Prince, who died far too young last week at the age of 57, a Simpsons writer has shared pages of a famous, lost episode about the star.
Al Jean was one of the original writers on the show, and overnight, he took to Twitter to share several pages of the unproduced screenplay, whose working title was simply ‘The Prince Episode’.
One of the pages has Lisa on the phone attempting to win tickets to a Prince concert, while another features Selma and Prince in a church parking lot, talking about his movies.
It’s understood that the ‘Prince’ in the episode would actually have been Leon Kompowsky, the same character who had an identity crisis and believed that he was Michael Jackson.
Prince would presumably have provided the voice, however, it’s understood that he saw a draft of the screenplay and objected to certain parts of it, asking for it to be rewritten. After this, the episode simply never went ahead.
It is unclear exactly who wrote the script, which was intended to be produced for the show’s fifth season. Some involved with the show say Conan O’Brien was involved in rewrites, while others claim he penned the entire thing.
(During his tenure as a Simpsons writer, O’Brien wrote a number of classic episodes, including ‘Marge Vs The Monorail’).
Check out the pages below:
.@TheSimpsons page from unproduced Prince script thank you Jacqueline Atkins for finding! pic.twitter.com/GvYaJKXxgD
— Al Jean (@AlJean) April 23, 2016
.@TheSimpsons possibly another objection Prince had to the script… pic.twitter.com/OgRxlZ5EKJ
— Al Jean (@AlJean) April 23, 2016
Source: Vulture.
Photo: Richard E Aaron / Getty.
