Prince’s estate reportedly blocked those involved in the creation of Melania Trump’s documentary from using his music, a producer on the project has alleged.
Melania Trump’s documentary, titled Melania, debuted last month and is expected to arrive on Prime Video later this year.
The film tracks the first lady during the 20 days leading up to Donald Trump’s second term in office, offering a behind-the-scenes look at that run-up.
Critics overwhelmingly panned it, but viewers told a very different story. At the time of writing, Melania sits at 11 percent with critics on Rotten Tomatoes, while its audience score is a far stronger 99 percent.
Even with that level of public approval, the production reportedly hit obstacles along the way — particularly when it came to securing music rights.
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Music licensing was said to be a major headache, as some artists are unwilling to have their songs connected to anything tied to Trump — even a project centered on Melania.
Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood was one musician who reportedly asked for his work to be removed from Melania, and producer Marc Beckman claims he wasn’t the only notable name to do so.
Beckman told Variety that Prince’s estate also prevented the late star’s music from being cleared for the documentary, despite initial interest from a rights holder.
He told Variety: “I think Prince sold the rights to Primary Wave. And the Primary Wave guys were like, ‘Oh yeah, we’d be happy to go ahead and give you guys the rights to this Prince song’.
“But in that instance, it’s my understanding that the deal was such that the estate now needs to approve what Primary Wave does with it. Literally we were ready to go, and and this lawyer that manages the estate was like, ‘Prince would never want his song associated with Donald Trump.'”
Beckman said the team tried to argue that the documentary wasn’t focused on Donald Trump and that he only appeared intermittently — but the estate still declined to allow the song’s use.
“It’s so ridiculous,” Beckman said of the ordeal.
Beckman’s comments surfaced only weeks after singer Sabrina Carpenter publicly criticized the Trump administration for using her track ‘Juno’ in a video showing ICE officers carrying out arrests.
“This video is evil and disgusting. Do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda,” she wrote on Twitter.
The White House responded by saying that it wouldn’t apologize for ‘deporting dangerous criminal illegal murderers, rapists, and pedophiles from our country’.