Thursday, March 28, 2024

Wesley Snipes Claims He Stole Prince’s Role in Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’ Video

Wesley Snipes on "Conan" - Aug 10, 2017 (TBS)
Wesley Snipes on “Conan” – Aug 10, 2017 (TBS)

*During a visit to “Conan” on Wednesday, Wesley Snipes claimed that he beat out Prince for the bad guy role in Michael Jackson’s “Bad” video, a story that goes against what Prince once said about casting.

“Me and Prince were auditioning together, and I blew Prince out of the water,” Snipes told Conan O’Brien. “Michael had told Prince that he had the role, and then he met me.”

But in a 1997 interview with Chris Rock for VH1, Prince insinuated that he actually turned down the “Bad” role.

“The first line in that song is, ‘Your butt is mine,’ so I was saying, ‘Who gonna sing that to whom? Because you sure ain’t singing it to me, and I sure ain’t singing it to you.’ So right there we got a problem,” Prince said.

The 18-minute short that gave Snipes his big break was directed by Martin Scorsese and puts inner-city gangs in a setting resembling “West Side Story.” Snipes told O’Brien his theory of why he scored the role: “[Jackson] really thought I was in a gang — he didn’t know that I was a trained thespian.” The actor goes on to joke, “At the time, the great Michael hadn’t spent very much time in the ‘hood.'”

Watch Snipes’ interview below, followed by Prince’s VH1 clip and the “Bad” video:

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