Jaafar Jackson reflects on portraying his uncle Michael Jackson in the biopic "Michael," and shares how he prepared for the role.
- How accurate is the new Michael Jackson movie (in theaters Friday, April 24)?
- The film delves into whether the pop star was physically abused by his father, Joe Jackson.
- Are those really Crips and Bloods gang members in Michael Jackson's 1983 "Beat It" video?
Spoiler alert! We're discussing major details about the new Michael Jackson movie "Michael."
Like many biopics these days, "Michael" is essentially a glorified Wikipedia page.
The excessively sanitized new film (in theaters now) depicts the King of Pop as an infallible, squeaky clean young man devoted to his family ‒ charting his child stardom and meteoric rise as a solo artist in the 1970s and '80s, but stopping just short of including his allegations of child sexual abuse.
Although the movie dutifully checks off the major milestones of Jackson's early career, it also dramatizes other events. For instance, there is no evidence that entertainment lawyer John Branca fired Jackson's father, Joe, over fax. And while there is a noted instance of Jackson signing autographs at a Texas toy store in 2004, there isn't any record of that happening in the '80s, as depicted in the film.
Here is the true story behind other key moments in "Michael," which stars Colman Domingo, Miles Teller, Nia Long and Jackson's nephew, Jaafar.
Did Joe Jackson really beat young Michael Jackson with a belt?
Early in the film, as Joe was assembling the Jackson 5 with Michael and his brothers, Joe is depicted as a harsh disciplinarian who brutally beats young Michael with a belt. While performing, Michael is often too nervous to look directly at his dad, and he soon finds a father figure of sorts in gentle Motown founder Berry Gordy.
In a 1993 TV interview with Jackson, Winfrey asks the singer directly whether Joe "ever beat you," to which Jackson replies, "Yes, he did."
"He was very strict, very hard, very stern," Jackson told Winfrey. "Just a look would scare you. ... There's been times when he'd come to see me, I'd get sick. I'd start to regurgitate."
Joe refuted his son's claims in a 2003 interview with Louis Theroux, saying, "I never beat him. I whipped him with a switch and a belt. I never beat him. You beat someone with a stick."
Did Michael Jackson really keep a pet chimp and giraffe while living at his parents' home?
As seen in the movie, Jackson actually did continue to live with his parents throughout the height of his "Off the Wall" and "Thriller" success, and eventually moved out on his own in 1988 at age 29, when he purchased his Neverland Ranch.
In the film, Jackson walks his pet llama, Louie, down a quiet neighborhood street, and feeds ice cream to his pet chimp, Bubbles, after playing in his toy room. At one point, a pet giraffe is even seen outside the window in his yard.
Although the movie is primarily set in the early 1980s, there is no evidence that Jackson actually owned a giraffe until 1986. But the biopic is accurate in Jackson’s love of animals, going so far as to adopt two pet tigers, Thriller and Sabu, who lived at Neverland Ranch in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Bubbles, meanwhile, is still alive and residing at a great ape sanctuary in Florida.
Did Michael Jackson have vitiligo while making 'Thriller?'
In the movie, Jackson lounges on a pool float brainstorming song ideas for what will become his 1982 "Thriller" album. Wearing a short-sleeved button-down shirt, light-colored patches of skin are visible on both of his arms. A little later in the movie, Jackson is shown covering faint, discolored blotches on his face with makeup.
In their 1993 televised sitdown, Winfrey confronted Jackson about whether he was "bleaching" his skin because he didn't "like being Black." In the interview, Jackson confirmed that his skin started to change "sometime after 'Thriller.' " He was formally diagnosed in 1986 with vitiligo, which caused him to lose the pigment in patches of his skin.
Did Michael Jackson's record label actually threaten MTV?
In one of the movie's more crowd-pleasing scenes, Jackson and Branca confront CBS Records chief Walter Yetnikoff about why his "Thriller" album music videos aren't being played on MTV. Yetnikoff immediately puts in a call to an MTV executive, threatening to pull his entire roster of artists - including Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper and Billy Joel - from the channel unless "Billie Jean" is played within the next 10 minutes.
There is no evidence that Yetnikoff put an exact timeline on his demand, although according to Forbes, he really did say that he would yank his A-list stars from the network. Up until then, MTV catered to predominantly white artists; but with Yetnikoff’s help, Jackson broke down barriers for Black musicians on TV.
Did Michael Jackson really cast gang members in his 'Beat It' music video?
In the film, Jackson flips on a news broadcast to see reports of mounting gang violence between the Crips and Bloods in LA. With the assistance of the Los Angeles Police Department, he gathered roughly 80 rival gang members in a warehouse to appear in the background of his "Beat It" music video.
In an interview with Boards magazine, the video's director, Bob Giraldi, said that it really was Jackson's idea to bring together the Crips and Bloods as "a sort of peace offering."
"It was Michael," Giraldi told Boards. "He went out and he got 'em through, I guess, the LAPD's gang squad and he convinced them that, with enough police presence, this would be a smart and charitable thing to do; get them there to like each other and hang with each other for two days doing the video."
Did Michael Jackson surprise-announce the Jacksons' final show?
Months after recovering from a freak accident on the set of a 1984 Pepsi commercial, Jackson joined his brothers on one last Victory tour as a group. The trek’s final show in Los Angeles serves as the emotional climax of the “Michael” movie, as Jackson spites his father by announcing onstage, “This is our last and final tour. And I think this is our farewell tour.”
Although Jackson did make that proclamation in real life, it’s impossible to say whether the singer actually did face off backstage with his dad, who was eager to keep the sibling group together and defer Jackson’s solo career.