Apollonia Discusses Her Life w/ Prince, Filming Purple Rain & Her Work in Sunset Sound

I’m glad she’s okay after that Corleone car incident.

"Dating" David Lee Roth?

She and Roth were on again, off again before, during and a little while after she made Purple Rain. She doesn’t talk about her marriages to Greg Patschull and hot actor Kevin Bernhardt, though. I did love her Bob Dylan story.

She was married to actor Kevin Bernhardt who was so hot!

Mexican born in Santa Monica. I think Vanity was more exotic.

Babylonia.

Apollonia, Sheila E and Mayte are so obsessed with Prince years later despite the questionable things he did to them. That dick must have been magical.

I met her once. She propositioned me.

[quote] Mexican born in Santa Monica. I think Vanity was more exotic.

Vanity was more beautiful, charismatic and had a natural glamour, presence and mystery to her. Apollonia was just a b-actress and adult magazine model who was hired to replace Vanity in Purple Rain. Both were pretty awful singers but Vanity had a natural sex appeal and sweeter tone to her voice that clicked better with the music. Apollonia was just tone-deaf and her singing was abysmal. Prince should have had her voice dubbed lol.

^Unlike Apollonia, Vanity could carry a tune at times and had some pretty phrasing. Clever producing/mixing helped as well.

The Apollonia 6 music sounded rushed too. Vanity 6 is still a gem and Vanity's Motown records are pretty good but flopped due to lack of proper promotion. Imagine if Vanity had Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis or LaFace first then she could have had Janet, Pebbles or Paula's career.

[quote]I met her once. She propositioned me.

Wha-wha-whaaat???

Janet definitely took inspiration from Vanity. Maybe from the advice of Jam & Lewis to add more shock value and sex appeal to her album. Janet was known as the squeaky clean and wholesome Jackson sister. Songs like "Nasty" and "Funny How Time Flies" could have easily been Vanity songs with all the growling and moaning.

"I dedicate this last song to Apollonia, to Sheila E.! To Vanity! To Lisa & Wendy on their own! To all... that the glamourous life... implies..."

R12, I got my stories and ladies mixed up. I’m remembering Ola Ray. I met Apollonia and Ola Ray at the same event in the mid-90s.

^Wow! Ola is still gorgeous today as well. She propositioned you, eh? Cool.

[quote] Songs like "Nasty"

Nasty was born from Janet’s experience of being obnoxiously catcalled when she first got to Minneapolis to record and was walking down the street with a friend. Vanity would have relished the attention and would not have turned the experience into an feminist anthem.

R8 I would have given that a try. She was really beautiful in her heyday.

Vanity was more beautiful and talented, but Apollonia was beautiful in her own right even if less unique than Vanity. As for the music, the Vanity/Appollonia songs were basically Prince’s cast-offs and it showed. He didn’t bother trying to give them a different sound like Jam and Lewis did so masterfully for Janet.

Jennifer Beals was also considered for Purple Rain too. While she is pretty and definitely Prince's type. I can't picture her playing the role. Just like I can't picture her playing Squeak in The Color Purple which she was also originally considered for.

Apollonia's career lasted what, 6 months?

Next up - the inside story of 90's pop sensation Right Said Fred. Inside the fighting and all the juicy details. Stay tuned!

Apollonia and Vanity were both attractive. What they saw in that midget is beyond me. I guess money can make anybody beautiful.

I really don't buy that she co-wrote any songs with Prince. She was just an actress that was hired for the role in Purple Rain and Prince just used her as a placeholder for Vanity in Vanity 6. Apollonia has zero musical talent unlike Sheila E. and she wasn't a muse for Prince like Vanity was. I'm sure she became friends/acquaintances with Prince and his crew but I feel she inflates how important she really was to the creative process. The way she attacked Sheila E. too makes me think Apollonia is jealous of the fact she really lacked any connection to Prince the way that Vanity and Sheila had.

As much of a perfectionist as Prince was, Apollonia's vocal on "Take Me With U" is off-key from beginning to end.

Prince could make anyone sound good. It's hard to believe that the vocals used on the final recording was the best she could do with all of his producing skills.

This song is awesome. A collab between Vanity and Morris Day. This definitely would have been a hit if it had a music video and was heavily promoted.

[quote] Apollonia was just tone-deaf and her singing was abysmal. Prince should have had her voice dubbed lol.

That's all too painfully obvious on "Take Me With You"

[quote] Jennifer Beals was also considered for Purple Rain too. While she is pretty and definitely Prince's type. I can't picture her playing the role. Just like I can't picture her playing Squeak in The Color Purple which she was also originally considered for.

Jennifer was also chosen for the leading lady role in MJ’s Thriller, which of course ended up going to Ola Ray. Jen turned both Thriller and PR down to go to Princeton.

Apollonia was supposedly in the running for the Squeak role too.

I think Jennifer didn't want to be pigeonholed into just black roles nor did she like playing completely white girls. Apparently, it was a bit of a scandal when her mixed heritage was discovered after the huge success of Flashdance. She identifies as mixed race and her roles from the 90s and on reflected that. Like the characters she played in Devil in A Blue Dress, Feast of All Saints and The L Word. I've noticed Hollywood likes to make mixed actors chose a side. Halle Berry, Zendaya and Paula Patton playing just black girls while Rashida Jones and Wentworth Miller will only play white.

Also, Squeak is a light-skinned black woman described in the book. Apollonia isn't black (as far I know) so that was a weird casting decision.

Apples is Mexican, but I guess being hot on the heels of the PR success, the casting director was willing to let her pass for a light skinned black woman. Back in the day, we all thought that’s what she was anyway.

[quote]I've noticed Hollywood likes to make mixed actors chose a side. Halle Berry, Zendaya and Paula Patton playing just black girls while Rashida Jones and Wentworth Miller will only play white.

Wentworth Miller hasn't played a white person in a long time, and one of his earliest roles was as a light-skinned biracial man passing for white in "The Human Stain." He even requested that his Prison Break character, Michael Scofield, be retconned in the last season as a mixed race person when the show flashed documents about the character on screen.

I really loved Apollonia 6 & Vanity 6 for a brief spell in the mid-80s. Both girls are beautiful & I really liked the music. Susan & Brenda were also talented in their own right & I especially loved Susan’s tracks from both albums. I flipped when Vanity went Christian & at least initially bashed Prince any chance she could get. She died about 30 mins from where I live, but in her later years she really didn’t appear in public very often.

Remember when she got busted buying drugs in Echo Park and said she was doing research for an acting role?

She bought weed from a pre teen. She briefly talks about it here. They confiscated her car and was not able to get it back.

I’m a half hour into OP’s interview because I want to hear the Prince stories but my God, all she wants to do is talk about herself!

R34 I felt the same way. Don't get me wrong, Apples seems like a nice woman but the years of drug abuse, drinking and old age has her misremembering some things. She is really taking credit for too many elements of Purple Rain that she did not have any input in, claiming she wrote songs (despite having no credits) and she also seems to think that she is actually Vanity.

I thought her reveal that Vanity was there when Prince took her to First Ave. during her Purple Rain audition was pretty cool. She’s recounted the story before but this was the first time she mentioned that Vanity was actually there.

Vanity walked away from all of this. She became a born-again Christian which is not unusual for former drug addicts and prostitutes. They replace one addiction with another. She had a very fucked up life with her abusive father. Prince was an asshole to her, trying to control her life and played mind games to get her jealous. She walked away from him and just ended up with other shitty boyfriends like Nikki Six. She almost overdosed and had her religious awakening. After that awakening, she started a new life and went by her real name Denise Matthews and retired from the music and film industry. Prince had a religious awakening too in the late 90s after Jehovah's Witness Larry Graham (Drake's uncle no lie) evangelized to him. Prince was vulnerable after the death of his child with Mayte and got swept up in his newfound religion though he seemed more spiritual rather than dogmatic.

[quote] he seemed more spiritual rather than dogmatic

Prince, along with Larry Graham, actually did the Jehovah's Witness door-to-door thing. Can you imagine a ring of your doorbell thinking "Not those fucking annoying Jehovah's Witnesses again!" and seeing Prince as the Witness?

OP's video is over 2 hours long?

I think back then Vanity and Appollonia hit a glass ceiling. There just weren’t good roles for “exotic” women like them in the way there are now. Neither were real musical talents, and were too early for the manufactured singers a la Britney. Madonna, for instance, had a better voice and she knew what was hot-like her early insistance on using synth bass instead of bass guitar. I don’t think Vanity or Apples was that “into” the production.

Was Prince white or have white skin?

Proof that Apples did introduce P to the Bangles music.

I think even if Vanity and Apollonia were into their music, Prince was way too much of a control freak. I think he just saw his early protégées as vessels for his sound. Carmen Electra was another one of his experiments.

His later collaborators, Rosie Gaines and Tamar at least could sing. Sheila E was always a musician and could write her own stuff. Andy Allo was another musician associate.

Madonna had a dance background, was in a few rock bands and hanged out with a lot of artists. She surrounded herself with extremely creative people and learned from them. Apollonia and Vanity were too drugged out to learn.

Associates.

Associated artists.

Prince’s associated acts all got the Prince sound: same drum machine, same claps, same instrumentation. He did his sound and that was it back then. The Family was another associated act with Susannah Melvoin (Wendi’s sister). All of the music sounds the same, except Prince got the best tracks.

Did Prince force her to eat soup when she didn't want to?

No. Prince only served soup to bald headed Irish chicks. Pancakes to black comedians who sucked at basketball.

[quote] Did Prince force her to eat soup when she didn't want to?

No, but he did force her to purify herself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka...

or so she thought.

R43 and she received a rare full dance scholarship to the University of Michigan as a Junior in high school and left a year early. Her senior year in high school was her freshman year at U of M

She was referred to as Apollonia Kotero all along and it wasn't assumed that she was same black and white mix as Vanity

Prince was light-skinned but musically he was much more R&B sounding than Michael Jackson, Donna Summer or Lionel Ritchie. Prince was one of the first black artists on MTV in fact. Rick James should have been too but Superfreak was rejected because it was too "racy".

Early Prince was more rock/New Wave with twinges of R&B.

[quote] She was referred to as Apollonia Kotero all along

Not before Purple Rain. She was known as Patty Kotero before Purple Rain.

Early early Prince was disco and soul.

He wrote this song for Chaka Khan. I love both versions.

[quote] He wrote this song for Chaka Khan

Ch...

Was Prince white?

r57 He was high yellow

[quote]The Apollonia 6 music sounded rushed too. Vanity 6 is still a gem and Vanity's Motown records are pretty good but flopped due to lack of proper promotion. Imagine if Vanity had Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis or LaFace first then she could have had Janet, Pebbles or Paula's career.

Jesse Johnson (from the Time) produced this for Vanity; it's a great track and vocal performance. She needed the right producers.

I just started watching and her first sentence is already a lie! Purple Rain and Baby I'm A star were not recorded on the piano in Sunset Sound, since they were recorded LIVE prior to the movie (its common knowledge).

He had some nice work done over the years, refining his look without going overboard.

I think he had some botox and fillers. He wore a lot of makeup and permed his hair. He also had a restrictive diet and lost a lot of weight. I don't think he had any drastic procedures. Maybe a few touchups here and there.

He had a nose job-tiplasty probably, and serious, serious, dental work. Facelift at some point. Fillers, but done well and botox. His hair was permed when he came out buy around the time of purple rain he started wearing wigs and never stopped. He had nice units unlike MJ who always looked like he got his wigs from Hood beauty supply stores ans glued them on with crazy glue. Plus Mj’s harsh eye brows, that nose thingamd the fake chin cleft. My heavens...

[quote] serious, serious, dental work

Very true.

Prince did not wear wigs. That was always his hair, honey. Not all men lose their hair.

Michael's memoir (2018)

Prince wore his hair completely natural a few years before he died. He did use weaves and pieces at various times in his career but I think he took good care of his hair and had an excellent hairstylist. He didn't destroy it by going overboard with the chemicals and heat.

[quote] Not all men lose their hair.

Prince was a man?

Apples Should get royalties for the songs that she wrote with Prince.

There's likely many people in Prince's camp who didn't get credited (it wasn't uncommon back then for cowriters to be uncredited) but we all know Apollonia certainly isn't one of them.

Yesterday was Prince's birthday. He would've been 63.

Apollonia lacked energy on stage. No charisma or rhythm. Susan and Brenda didn't click with her at all. They all looked like they were forced to do this performance lol

I'm loving the tea Jill Jones is spilling on Apollonia's new podcaast.

Before Purple Rain, she co-starred in a steamy, soft core B-movie alongside hairy chested, green eyed Mexican heartthrob (and Playgirl model) Jaime Moreno.

The movie was in Spanish, but she played her part in English, and another actress's voice was dubbed in Spanish over hers. Not an uncommon practice back then, but it was still tacky.

I saw her in person once in a store in West Hollywood. She is really, really tiny, which I suspect is why she was cast alongside Prince, rather than for any acting, singing, or songwriting ability. Her willingness to go full frontal didn't hurt either.

Anyway, here's Jaime Moreno in all his glory.

^Yes, it was called "Amor Ciego" (aka "Sex Beach") and I own it on VHS. Jamie Moreno was hot as FUCK in it. She has that in common with Vanity in that before Prince, she starred in a soft core movie. Vanity's was the Canadian ape-meets-girl flick "Tanya's Island."

Apollonia is hated by a lot of Prince fans because she likes to pretend she was a bigger influence in his life than she actually was. She seems nice and all but totally delusional. She was just a hot piece of ass there to be a Vanity lookalike. I get that it's hard for her to accept that though.

That 2 part interview with Jill was great. Jill, always telling it like it is, revealed that she slept with Albert Magnoli, the director of Purple Rain. Apollonia said that she thought he was hot and had a nice butt, and that Prince knew it and teased her about it.

I liked Apples 1988 album free of all Prince involvement on Warner Brod Records. It was dance/pop and pretty good at that.

Since I Fell For You

Synchronize

Mismatch

Those were my fave tracks!!!

[quote] That 2 part interview with Jill was great. Jill, always telling it like it is,

I started listening and got sucked in. Jill is way more interesting than Apollonia, she should have her own podcast. I remember Jill serving sapphic realness with Lisa in the "Automatic" video.

I looove me some Jill Jones. I had her LP on vinyl & remember WASHING it!

I watched parts 1 & 2 of the Jill Jones interview. My takeaway is that Jill Jones is a bitter player who still believes she deserved more. I can understand that, but she never seems to place blame on herself. Many times she, and I'll assume unwittingly, describes instances where she comes off as jealous & difficult. She tries to bend the reasoning for her lack of attention from Prince to her solo album around to "white women coming around" for hit songs, claiming Sugar Walls & Eternity were supposed to be her songs. They very well may have been songs intended for her, but that's just a flimsy argument--and a truly cheap stab at crying racism. With 3 of Prince's eligible proteges at the time all having their own issues it's no wonder that Prince gladly offered quality, well-potentialed songs to a proven hitmaker like Sheena Easton. It was simply good business, especially considering that Vanity was deep in substance abuse, Apollonia couldn't carry a tune in a bag & Jill herself was still a virtual unknown who, according to her own version of the events, gave Prince a lot of lip.

I found it interesting that Jill Jones would elude to race as much as she did, as she was involved with a group of artists who were all black, were all at the top of their games & were all very well connected in the business enough get any project they saw fit supported & launched. If Jill Jones wasn't getting the attention she left like she deserved from Prince or his people I'd gather there was a reason. I have her album, it's not bad. But it does have a rushed quality, a very obliged & uninspired essence about it. After all was said over 2 hours of interview time I just got the impression that 1) Jill Jones needs someone to blame for her lack of realized potential and that 2) she's another biracial individual who looks much more white that black & needs to compensate by reminding everyone that "See, I'm black, too, I've been discriminated against!" Her blame for not becoming Sheena Easton or Teena Marie (whom she worked with) should be aimed primarily at herself & the decisions she made, including waiting for Prince to give the success she was hoping to have.

Jill did a lot of the singing for Apples on Apollonia 6. She also did back up for Vanity 6. Prince wrote Sex Shooter, Prince wrhote most everything any "group" associated with him did. The family, what became of the Time after Morris Day left was all written by Prince.

Apples hated 'Graffiti Bridge' when she was offered a part in it, told Prince to his face that the script & concept were shit, and refused to do it, so poetess Ingrid Chavez got the leading lady role that would have been hers. Good for her!

She looked great here with straight hair.

R3/R4 when filming PURPLE RAIN, Apples was under specific instruction by WB execs to keep her marital status a secret, so the studio could seed and market the idea of a budding romance of her & Prince.

[quote] When the directors and Prince came to me and said, "there is a scene [in GRAFFITI BRIDGE] when you’re gonna have to cry after Aura [the leading lady character, as played by Ingrid Chavez] gets hit by a car. You know, can you cry?" Because they said that in PURPLE RAIN Apollonia couldn’t cry. and those were glycerin tears under here eyes. Did you know that? Those were not her tears, those were glycerin drops. So the director told me that and Prince told me that.

--Robin Power, from an anecdote shared with the hosts of 'Podcast on Prince', in the March 17, 2021 episode

Did she talk about that Old Crow from Falcon Crest?

What they saw in Prince was a nine-inch cock on a 5'2" man. That must have looked gigantic. There were three women in the 6 groups. Of the three Vanity and Appolonia were just the front women. Pretty, but vocally thin. Susan Moonsie and Brenda Barrett were the other two members and contributed to all the songwriting. Susan tells a story of how she would camp out at Prince's gated house and would sing her lyrics in to the speaker, until one day Prince let her in, impressed by her lyrics and her drive. Brenda was a backup singer for Prince when he put Vanity 6 together. Prince had another artist, Jill Jones, who was underage for Vanity 6 but he used her to punch up Vanity and Appolonia's Vocals. If you saw Purple Rain she was the waitress at the club who was crying after Purple Rain and Prince runs into her and says Hi. She did release one album under Paisley Park. Mia Boca and Trip and a Half are probably the best songs on it. Mia Boca sounds just like a Vanity 6 song.

Mia Bocca - her single and video. Pretty much the sound of any V6 or A6 song.

and like any Prince produced act - he wrote all the material - here is Price doing baby your a trip..

R88 Jill had a slightly bigger part in 'Graffiti Bridge', presumably because Prince had promised it to her at some time, or because she lobbied for it or pulled some kind of card to get it (good for her). She did enough background vocal work for Prince and his bands to deserve such a favour--her voice is all over so many tracks of the mid-to-late 1980s and early 90s catalogue. She was the Darlene Love of Paisley Park. Only Lisa Coleman and Sheila E. contributed more in this regard, if we count B-sides and demos unofficially released etc.

Jill appears in 'Graffiti' as the sultry, sassy and jilted ex-girlfriend of Prince's character Kid, who also works as an erotic dancer in his club The Glam Slam. She is meant to be the devilish, contrasting counterpart to the angelic, sweet and innocent 'Aura' character, the poet for whom Kid falls for romantically in the film. This is speculation, but there's a vibe that Prince also cast Jill and wrote her character that way as a disrespectful jab, implying that he finds her too uppity, and too overtly sexual (talk about throwing stones...), even too mature for his tastes at the time. She's even costumed in clingy, revealing scarlet dresses.

Jill's most memorable scene was an interaction with Kid, where he makes a bet with her, that she loses, forfeit being to take off her red lace panties in the street and hand them to Kid--which she does, then struts away and out of the movie in disgust and dismissal. She claims that she felt the scene was gratuitous and didn't want to do it, but Prince made her a deal (on which he reneged) that if she filmed it then he'd include her vocals in the movie.

[quote] JONES: The scene [to take off panties] was very exploitative. I did it, but I didn’t want to, especially.... [it was] because Prince let me sing [backup, in the film] with my own vocal. And then I found out he put Elisa Fiorillo’s vocal over mine. When I heard he did that, I was like, "ok, alright!" He was dating Elisa somewhere in the middle of all this, too, so I guess because he couldn’t put her in the movie [after it was wrapped], maybe he put her in there in a really weird way. That’s how Prince was.

Though, by the time of 'Graffiti' recording and filming, like many of the Purple entourage she was on the outs with Prince and the weird direction he was taking. She was still in the camp up to 1990 and she gamely did the work she agreed to for 'Graffiti', but she was planning her exit as she didn't want to be 'just another P Girl'.

^Prince even asked Jill to open for the 'Sign O' The Times' tour along with Madhouse, but she wanted to prove that she didn't need him as a mogul. Around this time, it's thought that Prince gifted her an expensive beautiful heart-shaped bracelet as a personal gift--the heart symbol being a motif used in the movie 'Graffiti'--and she wouldn't wear it, because of his controlling behaviour, including putting restrictions on who she could work with (her contract prevented her hiring or working for other producers), asking her to get plastic surgery, and critiquing how she dressed even offstage.

Jill eventually took time off, went to Europe for a spell then went into hiding in New York, and basically tried to quit quietly.

[quote] JONES: (on the unfinished second Paisley Park album, and her estrangement from Prince) We were kind of were at two different roads. The song 'Boom Boom' [meant for the Paisley Park album] was from 1982, but he kept on remixing it [up to 1989]. I still went to do the video, but, it was late, it was too late. Rob Dickins, CEO of Warner Brothers UK, was instrumental, along with Roger Davies my manager, in working to complete my second album alone. Without Prince. But, Prince rejected every attempt we tried.

[quote] I just ended up going back to New York, got married, and waited until my contract expired. During this time, [Prince] called me once-- and I was staying at a friend's house, so I don't know how he tracked me down-- and said to me, "you don't have any charisma; you should dye your hair, and you need to get breast implants like Brigitte Nielsen." I was furious.