Did Michael Jackson really have a pet giraffe? Has your skin become brighter due to vitiligo? Here’s what actually happened:
Jaafar Jackson reflects on playing his uncle in ‘Michael’ premiere
Jaafar Jackson reflected on playing his uncle Michael Jackson in the biopic “Michael” and talked about how he prepared for the role.
- How accurate is Michael Jackson’s new movie (released Friday, April 24th)?
- The film delves into whether the pop star was physically abused by her father, Joe Jackson.
- Are the guys in Michael Jackson’s 1983 “Beat It” video really members of the Crips and Bloods gang?
Spoiler alert! We discuss key details about Michael Jackson’s new movie, Michael.
Like many biopics these days, “Michael” is essentially a glorified Wikipedia page.
The overly sanitized new film (now in theaters) depicts the King of Pop as an unerringly squeaky-clean young man devoted to his family, charting his childhood stardom and meteoric rise as a solo artist in the 1970s and ’80s, but stopping short of including allegations of child molestation.
The film dutifully ticks off the major milestones of Jackson’s early career, but also dramatizes other events. For example, there is no evidence that entertainment lawyer John Branca fired Jackson’s father, Joe, over a fax. And while there is a record of Jackson signing an autograph at a Texas toy store in 2004, there is no record of this happening in the ’80s as depicted in the movie.
Here’s the true story behind other key moments in Michael, starring Colman Domingo, Miles Teller, Nia Long and Jackson’s nephew Jaafar.
Did Joe Jackson really beat young Michael Jackson with the belt?
Early in the film, Joe is depicted as a harsh disciplinarian who brutally beats young Michael with a belt when he and his brothers are assembling the Jackson 5. While Michael is often too nervous to look directly at his father, he eventually finds a kind of father figure in the gentle Motown founder Berry Gordy.
In a 1993 television interview with Jackson, Winfrey said that Joe directly asked Jackson if he had “ever hit you,” to which Jackson replied, “Yes, I have.”
“He was a very strict, very strict, very demanding person,” Jackson told Winfrey. “You’d be scared just by looking at it. … There was a time when he came to see me and I felt sick. I started throwing up.”
Joe refuted his son’s claims in a 2003 interview with Louis Theroux, saying, “I never hit him. I whipped him with a switch and a belt. I never hit him. I hit people with sticks.”
Did Michael Jackson really keep chimpanzees and giraffes as pets while living at home?
As seen in the film, Jackson actually continued to live with his parents through the height of the success of Off the Wall and Thriller, eventually striking out on his own in 1988 at the age of 29 and purchasing Neverland Ranch.
In the film, Jackson walks his pet llama, Louie, down a quiet neighborhood street, plays in his toy room, and then feeds his pet chimpanzee, Bubbles, ice cream. At one point, a pet giraffe can even be seen outside the garden window.
Although the film is primarily set in the early 1980s, there is no evidence that Jackson actually owned a giraffe until 1986. But the biopic accurately portrays 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.
Meanwhile, Bubbles is still alive and living in a great ape sanctuary in Florida.
Did Michael Jackson suffer from vitiligo while making ‘Thriller’?
In the film, Jackson lounges on a pool float while brainstorming ideas for songs that would become the 1982 “Thriller” album. He wears a short-sleeved button-down shirt, and patches of light-colored skin can be seen on his arms. A little later in the film, Jackson is shown using makeup to cover up faint discolored spots on her face.
In a televised roundtable discussion in 1993, Winfrey questioned whether Jackson was “bleaching” his skin because he “hated being black.” In an interview, Jackson admitted, “My skin started changing a while after ‘Thriller.'” He was officially diagnosed with vitiligo in 1986, which causes patches of skin to lose their pigment.
Did Michael Jackson’s record company actually blackmail MTV?
In one of the film’s most crowd-pleasing scenes, Jackson and Branca confront CBS Records president Walter Yetnikoff about why the music video for his album “Thriller” isn’t being played on MTV. Yetnikoff immediately called MTV executives and threatened to remove all of their artists, including Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper and Billy Joel, from the channel unless they played “Billie Jean” within 10 minutes.
There’s no evidence that Yetnikov set an exact schedule for his request, but Forbes says he did indeed say he would poach the A-list star from the network. Until then, MTV had primarily targeted white artists, but with Yetnikoff’s help, Jackson broke down barriers for black musicians on television.
Did Michael Jackson really cast gang members in his “Beat It” music video?
In the film, Jackson turns on the newscast and sees reports of escalating gang violence between the Crips and Bloods in Los Angeles. With the help of the Los Angeles Police Department, he assembled approximately 80 rival gang members in a warehouse to appear in the background of the “Beat It” music video.
In an interview with Boards magazine, the video’s director, Bob Girardi, said it was Jackson’s idea to bring the Crips and Bloods together as “a kind of peace offer.”
“It was Michael,” Girardi told Boards. “He went out and put them through the LAPD gang squad and convinced them that with enough police presence, this would be a smart and charitable thing to do. He got them there, did each other a favor, and they ended up spending two days together filming each other.”
Did Michael Jackson surprise announce the Jackson family’s final show?
Several months after recovering from a freak accident on the set of a Pepsi commercial in 1984, Jackson joined his brothers on the group’s final Victory Tour. The final show of the trip in Los Angeles serves as the emotional climax of the movie “Michael,” in which Jackson taunts his father on stage, saying, “This is my last, final tour. And I think this is my farewell tour.”
Although Jackson actually made such a declaration, it is impossible to say whether Jackson actually had a conflict behind the scenes with his father, who was keen to maintain the brother group and postpone Jackson’s solo career.
