'Crazy Ex-Girlfriend' Creators Remember Filming Rap Number With Nipsey Hussle: "He Was Just Game"

Publish date: 2024-07-06

Nipsey Hussle’s tragic March 31 shooting death in South Los Angeles inspired many to reflect on the Grammy-nominated artist’s brief career and good works in his hometown. It also prompted plenty of people to revisit his 2015 appearance in The CW’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend pilot, rapping about the “patriarchal bullshit” women endure in the musical comedy’s “The Sexy Getting Ready Song.”

“He was so sweet and so funny,” co-creator Aline Brosh McKenna recalls of the shoot, in which Hussle, playing himself, gets distracted from his rap by star and co-creator Rachel Bloom pantomiming waxing her rear, tweezing nose hairs and squeezing into Spanx. “I love that clip, because Rachel is just standing on the toilet looking at him and he’s genuinely horrified.”

“He was just game,” adds Bloom, whose series aired its last episode on April 5. “He brought his girlfriend [actress Lauren London] on-set, and I remember her thinking the song was so funny.”

So eager was Hussle to help out on the show, when he was not in town for a tag that Bloom and McKenna decided to add to the end of the episode, he offered to phone in the lines and the producers cast a body double to fill out the extra scene.

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A version of this story also appears in the April 11 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

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