“I just looked, like, ‘Man, we’re growing up. All of the things that we didn’t discuss before,” she continued. Kotero recalled some of her last conversations with Prince, saying they talked about “family, his parents, politics, love, death, dementia, our marriages.” I said no to him for a lot of reasons professionally.” I believe that’s what he respected, that I wasn’t a pushover. We had our difficulties, and I always stood up to him. “There’s a different type of respect that he had for me. “Prince and I never dated - we’re family, we were friends,” she said. Kotero said she’s still in touch with her bandmates and she’s finally speaking publicly since it has been three years since Prince’s death. Kotero co-starred in 1984′s “Purple Rain” and was in the trio Apollonia 6 with Brenda Bennett and Susan Moonsie, former singers in Vanity 6. I never suffered such severe depression.” I’ve never discussed this, other than with my loved ones.
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“It sounds strange for me to be saying it for the first time publicly. I just didn’t know if I was going to make it,” she recently told The Associated Press by phone in Los Angeles. “I just physically couldn’t cry and I was feeling ill, really ill.
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He had so many plans.”īut things changed once Prince died, sending Kotero into a “rabbit hole of severe depression” - as she put it in her first interview since Prince died on April 21, 2016. “My first thought was like, ‘Damn, I gotta hit the gym now,’” Kotero said. He had even given Kotero and her Apollonia 6 bandmates the trademark to the group’s name to keep the legacy alive. NEW YORK (AP) - Former Prince protege and longtime friend Apollonia Kotero said the Purple One had major plans for her before his untimely death in 2016, including new music, a possible film and even a book to follow-up his upcoming memoir. Kotero said Prince's untimely death in 2016 sent her into a “rabbit hole of severe depression.” (Photo by Mark Von Holden/Invision/AP) Apollonia Kotero, a former protege and longtime friend of Prince, poses in front of a portrait of the artist at Warner Music Group in Los Angeles on Friday, May 31, 2019.