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Eighties music icon Lisa Lisa portrayed her own mother in her recent Lifetime biopic “Can You Feel the Beat: The Lisa Lisa Story.”
But she almost made an even splashier acting turn as Eddie Murphy’s love interest — who also just so happened to be named Lisa — in the 1988 classic “Coming to America.”
“That was crazy,” Lisa Velez, 59, told The Post about almost getting her big-screen close-up three years after breaking out with 1985’s “I Wonder If I Take You Home,” her debut single with Cult Jam.
“We were hanging out, Eddie and I, back in the day with Mike Tyson. I remember when he wanted to do a rom-comer, he wanted to test it out [to see if there was any chemistry].”
Lisa Lisa apparently passed the test.
“Later on I was sent a script, and they offered me that part, which was amazing,” she said of the role of Queens, New York resident Lisa McDowell, who is courted by Murphy’s Prince Akeem from the fictional African country of Zamunda in the beloved romantic comedy.
But it was never meant to be for Lisa Lisa to be the future queen of Zamunda.
“I was married then, and I showed my then husband [John Yulfo] the script, and he did not want me to do that,” she said. “So I had to let it go.”
While acknowledging that Shari Headley was “fantastic” in the role, Lisa Lisa now realizes she was playing too much of the “good wife.”
“I was young and stupid,” she said. “I thought I was doing the right thing, you know, being a good wife. But I’ve asked myself [why], like, 100 times.”
Playing her own mother in her biopic, though, was a different kind of challenge.
“To see my life in her eyes was everything to me,” she said. “I have to say my mom, she fought to make sure that her 10 babies were able to live their dreams. So it was surreal.”
The biopic also covers the domestic violence that Lisa Lisa’s mother endured from her husband and the singer’s secret battle with breast cancer.
“It was hard speak on something that I hid for so many years,” she said of the cancer treatments she underwent, wearing a hidden chemo pack while performing on tour with Cult Jam.
“I was so afraid that it was going to be taken away from me, and I couldn’t let that happen, so I hid it. I never told anyone,” she said. “I just had a great doctor, and I had a nurse that contacted me while I was on the road, and I got my treatment while I was out there.”
While reliving all of that trauma in the biopic was tough for her, she said, “It was also very therapeutic.”
And four decades after releasing “I Wonder If I Take you Home,” the freestyle queen — who went on to have hits such as “All Cried Out,” “Head to Toe” and “Lost in Emotion” — is still going strong with a 40th anniversary tour that hits the Apollo Theater on Saturday as part of D-Nice’s Club Quarantine Live show.
“The audience is all Harlem people, my people,” said the New York native, who has previously performed at the legendary venue three times. “They’re always so ready for the music. I just love it.”