Arsenio Hall drops defamation lawsuit against Sinead O’Connor after singer’s apology

Comedian Arsenio Hall has dropped a lawsuit against Sinead O’Connor after the Irish singer apologized for claiming he had long provided the late pop star Prince with narcotics, his publicist said on Thursday.

Hall, best known as the host of “The Arsenio Hall Show,” filed a $5 million defamation lawsuit against O’Connor in Los Angeles Superior Court in May, days after she wrote on Facebook that he supplied hard drugs to Prince for decades.

“Sinead has retracted and apologized for statements she made about Arsenio last year, which prompted his defamation lawsuit against her, and the lawsuit has been resolved,” Hall’s publicist said in an emailed statement.

O’Connor, whose biggest hit was her 1990 version of the Prince song “Nothing Compares 2 U,” posted a note on her Facebook page on Wednesday saying her initial claims were false.

“I was wrong to claim Arsenio gave Prince drugs,” she wrote.

Prince, whose full name was Prince Rogers Nelson, died unexpectedly last April at age 57 from a prescription drug overdose at his Paisley Park home and studio in Minnesota.

O’Connor has publicly struggled with her own substance abuse issues. In late 2015, the firebrand singer said in a Facebook post that she had deliberately taken a drug overdose. (Reporting by Laila Kearney; Editing by Leslie Adler)