Prince — Purple Mansion Demolition

Coming soon

Purple Mansion Demolition

In May 2005, NBA player Carlos Boozer rented his Bel-Air mansion to Prince while Boozer was away for the basketball season. The lease reportedly prohibited alterations. Prince nevertheless replaced carpets with purple and black versions, installed a hair salon and a disco in separate rooms and placed his symbols, purple stripes and the number 3121 on the property.

Boozer served a three-day notice to cure or quit in November. A lawsuit followed in January 2006, seeking damages and restoration costs, but it was later withdrawn. Boozer subsequently said Prince provided a substantial deposit and returned the mansion to its original condition when the lease ended.

The episode is currently in production. It follows the transformation room by room, then the landlord’s discovery, legal response and eventual resolution—an argument between a rental agreement and a tenant for whom purple renovation was apparently a form of unpacking.

It is one chapter in Absurd History of Celebrity Culture: true celebrity stories reconstructed as compact cinematic documentaries, where the historical detail is real and the presentation knows exactly how ridiculous reality can be.