Former late night talk show host Arsenio Hall has filed a $5 million defamation lawsuit against Sinead O’Connor over a Facebook post in which the Irish singer accused the comedian of furnishing Prince with drugs.
“Two words for the DEA investigating where Prince got his drugs over the decades…Arsenio Hall (AKA Prince’s and Eddie Murphy’s bitch),” O’Connor wrote on her Facebook page on May 2. “Anyone imagining Prince was not a long time hard drug user is living in cloud cuckoo land.”
In the libel lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Arsenio Hall calls O’Connor a “desperate attention-seeker,” with a history of “bizarre, unhinged internet rants,” who’s now peddling “outlandish defamatory lies.”
O’Connor’s claim came just days after news spread that Prince had Percocet in his system when he was found unresponsive at his Paisley Park home on April 21. As Breitbart News reported, Prince died just hours before he was to meet with a specialist in painkiller addiction.
Oddly enough, Sinead O’Connor appeared on The Arsenio Hall Show in the early 90’s — once appearing to discuss the four Grammy Award nominations she earned for her 1991 cover of Prince’s song “Nothing Compares 2 U.”
Prince has two appearances on The Arsenio Hall Show. The rock legend’s 1993 performance of Purple Rain on the late night show has garnered over 30 million views on Youtube. Prince also appeared, again, 20 years later on the relaunched Arsenio Hall Show, in a memorable performance that saw the singer take over the show.
“I was aware of hip pain that he had,” Hall told Access Hollywood of his deceased friend, adding that, “I never talked about that kind of thing, or got into that kinda stuff. I knew it, but guys don’t go,’Yo, how your hip, man? You know, guys don’t even have those kind of conversations. But I’m really gonna miss him.”
Arsenio Hall is seeking $5 million in compensatory damages.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson
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