Fred Armisen Shares His Very Relatable Prince Story 20 Years Later

Fred Armisen Finally Understands Prince’s Macaroni-And-Cheese Punchline

Comedian mastermind Fred Armisen has unlocked his archival vault once again, revisiting a painfully relatable encounter with Prince that involved nerves, hero worship and a plate of macaroni and cheese.

During the July 14, 2026 episode of Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, Armisen looked back at meeting the Purple One after Prince performed on Saturday Night Live in 2006. Twenty years later, what once seemed like a wonderfully strange response now makes far more sense to him.

Prince Was Sitting Alone With The Greatest Macaroni And Cheese

Prince had thrown his own gathering after SNL, and Armisen spotted him sitting alone at a table—not sadly, he clarified, but like somebody who simply wanted a quiet moment to eat.

Armisen nervously sat beside him and offered the kind of compliment many of us imagine delivering perfectly before meeting somebody we admire: “I think you’re the greatest.”

In his head, Armisen hoped the compliment might produce a little recognition in return. Maybe Prince would call him funny. Maybe he would acknowledge Armisen’s work. Maybe thee greatest would give him something he could carry away from the table.

Instead, Prince replied: “You know what I think the greatest is? This macaroni and cheese.”

That was it. No grand exchange between artists. No life-changing affirmation. Just Prince, Fred and apparently some elite-level macaroni and cheese.

Twenty Years Later, Fred Realized Prince May Have Been Doing A Bit

At the time, Armisen interpreted the answer through the ego and uncertainty of somebody who had just approached one of his heroes. He thought Prince had simply said something weird.

Age gave the encounter a different meaning. Armisen now suspects Prince may have been doing exactly what a comedian might do when faced with a heavy compliment: deflect it with a joke and move the conversation somewhere less reverential.

“Maybe he was just trying to do a bit,” Armisen reflected, recognizing that he has used the same kind of joke himself. What once felt confusing now reads like an elegant escape hatch from having to respond to somebody calling you the greatest person alive.

Fred Also Apologized To Prince For His Saturday Night Live Impression

Armisen had another encounter with Prince at Saturday Night Live, where he had famously impersonated the musician in “The Prince Show” sketches alongside Maya Rudolph’s Beyoncé.

Before a rehearsal, Armisen called out to him and blurted, “I’m sorry about my impression of you.”

Prince turned around and repeated the apology back as a question: “You’re sorry?” Then he smiled and gave Armisen a small, reassuring rub on the arm.

Armisen remembers the gesture as genuinely sweet. Whether Prince meant the impression was good, harmless or simply not worth apologizing over, the response gave Fred the quiet approval he had been searching for during that macaroni-and-cheese encounter.

The Story Is Really About What Happens When We Meet Our Heroes

The tale survives because it is not only a Prince story. It is about the nervous bargain people make when approaching somebody they admire: we offer praise sincerely, but some small part of us still hopes they will hand back validation.

Prince did not respond according to the script Armisen had imagined. He answered like Prince—funny, elusive and impossible to read in the moment. Only years later could Fred hear the possible joke hiding inside the awkwardness.

Now Armisen wishes he could have brought it up with him again: “Hey, that macaroni joke you told me a couple years ago—that was pretty funny.” In his imagined version, Prince would probably insist he had no idea what Fred was talking about.

Watch Fred Armisen Tell His Prince Stories

Watch Fred Armisen explain Prince’s macaroni-and-cheese response, the meaning he found in it two decades later and Prince’s sweet reaction to his SNL impression.

Source: Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, The Howard Stern Show and Saturday Night Live.