Super Bowl Halftime Producer Says ‘There Was Never’ a Prince Hologram

The possibility of a Prince hologram turning up during the Super Bowl Halftime show made many fans upset, but one of the shows producers says “there was never” going to be one.

“And to refute any stories that were out there. There was never an idea to have a hologram,” Ricky Kirshner said.

The rumors of a Prince hologram appearing to perform with Justin Timberlake caused a big stir, with Prince’s old bandmate Sheila E. tweeting, “Prince told me don’t ever let anyone do a hologram of me. Not cool if this happens!”

When the big show aired, however, rather than a hologram a video of Prince performing was projected onto a large white screen behind Timberlake as he sang, “I Would Die 4 U.”

Kirshner was asked by Variety about the hologram rumors and if he had any idea how the reports got started.

“I can’t speculate as to what someone saw, but I do know that all of our people are not authorized to talk to the press so whoever was there and saw something they shouldn’t have seen shouldn’t have been there to begin with,” he replied.

“Justin has always said that he reveres Prince — his [2016 Netflix concert film] was dedicated to Prince — we were in Minneapolis, we thought it would be the right thing to do, and I still believe that. I watched the morning news shows in Minneapolis the day after the show and all of them were over the moon that we did something to honor Prince,” Kirshner continued.

“Just because a few people tweeted that they didn’t think we should doesn’t make it wrong, in my opinion. It was always the intent to honor Prince,” he concluded.

Timberlake’s Super Bowl halftime show has been met with mixed reactions, but the event spured a 534% sales gain for his music.

Tracks like “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” and “Filthy,” which is the first single off of his new album Man of the Woods, saw huge leaps in download numbers, with the latter selling an estimated 6,000 downloads on Feb. 4.

It also benefited the sales of “I Would Die 4 U.” That track sold a whopping 38,000 downloads on Feb.4, whereas the day prior it had sold 6,000, according to THR.

While his halftime show turned out to be light on surprises, many had been speculating for weeks if *NSYNC or Janet Jackson would show up to perform with him.

In an interview from January, Timberlake opened up about that notorious Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction that took place while he performed with Jackson and admitted that he “stumbled” in the aftermath.

While speaking to Beats 1 host Zane Lowe, Timberlake was asked about the incident and replied, “Yeah and I stumbled through it, to be quite honest.”

“I had my wires crossed, and it’s just something that you have to look back on and go, like, ‘OK, well, you know, you can’t change what’s happened but you can move forward and learn from it,’ ” he continued.

Lowe asked if Timberlake and Jackson had resolved that event between the two of them, to which the “Cry Me A River” singer confirmed that they “absolutely” had, as reported by E! News.

“And I don’t know that a lot of people know that,” Timberlake added. “I don’t think it’s my job to do that because you value the relationships that you do have with people.”