Being friends with Ed Sheeran sounds like a party. Take, for instance his good friend Courteney Cox. During the first night of Sheeran’s weeklong residency on The Late Late Show, host James Corden asked Ed about a prank he’s pulled on the Friends star over and over since they first met eight years ago.
“She has this Alexa thing in her house, and she goes, ‘Isn’t this wonderful? This is my Alexa. I can just order whatever on this.’ So she walks out of the room, and — do you know what a gimp mask is?” Sheeran asked a delighted-looking Corden about the S&M-style leather head covering with zippers on the eye and mouth holes. “So she walks out of the room and I go, ‘Alexa, order me a gimp mask.’”
To be clear, Sheeran and Cox became friendly after he ended up at the music-loving actress’ home in Malibu, Calif., in 2013 when a mutual friend introduced them. After the singer picked up a guitar and played a few songs, Cox said he was welcome to crash at her place anytime.
“Literally every single time I’ve been back to Los Angeles since then, I’ve stayed there,” Sheeran said, noting that he introduced the star to her boyfriend, Snow Patrol singer-guitarist Johnny McDaid.
It gets better, though. “Unbeknownst to me, Courteney’s assistant found it,” Sheeran continued. “She opened the … she opened the post and she finds this mask, and instantly goes, ‘Oh, I don’t think I was meant to see that,’ and leaves it on Courteney’s bed. And Courteney comes up and she’s like, ‘Where did this come from?’”
Now, every time he pops by, he orders more gimp masks and he hides them in the guest bedrooms, which means that at this point, there are quite a few scattered around the Malibu home. “I hide them in people’s bedrooms. So they’ll go in the drawer and find a leather S&M mask,” Sheeran laughed. “She had two people come and look at her piano to try and buy it, two absolute strangers going into her house that I found out about. So I left a couple of masks on the piano.”
Corden then cued up a video of a video Cox sent Sheeran for his 30th bday, in which she comes out of her trailer on set and thanks Ed for “all the protection” he’s offered her during COVID-19 before slipping on a mask and walking onto set. The singer also presented Corden with his own mask, which the host quickly slipped on, admitting, “I feel absolutely incredible … I never really got the appeal but it would be lovely for a snooze.”
Watch Sheeran describe his pranks below.
