Emma Stone Had Weird Emergency Surgery Before Performing With Prince At ‘SNL40’

Emma Stone is SNL royalty, hosting the show five times (so far) and marrying writer Dave McCary. She’s been around the show long enough to not only jump on stage with Haim for the SNL50 afterparty but at the SNL40 post-show concert as well. That epic performance featured Prince, and Stone proved she’d go to any length to bang the tambourine with His Royal Badness.

Stone told Seth Meyers this week that she’d taken off her shoes to dance at the SNL40 party. Unfortunately for Stone, someone had dropped a glass (I’m not saying it was Jimmy Fallon), and the shards weren’t completely removed from the floor. A few twists and spins later, and Stone found herself with a bloody heel. 

There must not have been a medic on call, based on what happened next. “They took me back to the back room,” Stone said. “The chef that worked at the hotel, which was the Plaza Hotel, cut out the glass with a paring knife.”

Yikes! No anesthesia? “I had had a few tequilas at this point,” Stone confessed. “Couldn't feel anything. Highly recommend tequila.”

Buoyed with booze and band-aids, Stone boogied back out to the dance floor. “I was walking back out, and they went, ‘You want to come on stage with Prince?’ It was like 90 seconds later. I was like, ‘Yep!’ Put my foot in a high heel, bleeding, and was doing the tambourine.”

Stone had no qualms about performing with a bloody foot? “If someone asks you to play tambourine for Prince,” she told Fallon a few years ago, “you do it.”

Performing with Prince was especially memorable because the legendary artist passed away just two months after the performance.

Meyers applauded Stone's ability to play through the pain, but had a question about her performances after the SNL anniversary shows. “In both cases, did you bring a tambourine?”

Nope, she doesn’t travel with her own percussion. “That was just on site,” she laughed. “They give me that because I can't — now, no offense to professional tambourine players everywhere — but they give me that because I can't play an instrument. So I get to participate by playing like a 3-year-old would.” 

Meyers suggested that Lorne Michaels invest in an Emma Stone gift for SNL60 — a golden tambourine. And if she cuts her hand on its gilded edges, well, there’s always tequila.