Jaafar Jackson, Michael Jackson’s nephew who starred in the biopic about the King of Pop, has shared his thoughts on the Michael sequel and how he hopes the film will tackle the multiple child sexual abuse allegations against the singer.
While the script for the Michael sequel is still in development, Jaafar told GQ Middle East, “I think the second film will give even more insight from his point of view, because at the end of the day, [the allegations] are always from someone else’s.”
Jaafar Jackson added of the accusations of child sexual abuse against Michael, “It’s someone else’s story. It’s someone else’s idea of what it is, and it’s mainly driven by an agenda. And that’s really the issue we’ve been having as a family – not having Michael’s voice being heard. I think that’s very, very important, especially in the late years.”
Michael, which became the highest-grossing biopic ever at the box office despite the controversies surrounding the singer, ended with the release of Bad. The film initially touched on the 1993 allegations against the singer, but a binding legal clause in the $20 million settlement with one accuser forced producers to scrap the third act, rewrite the script, reshoot, and end the first film in 1987.
It’s unclear whether the sequel will sidestep the 1993 accusations and instead tackle some of the other allegations against Jackson — including those revealed in the documentary Leaving Neverland — or if the child sexual abuse allegations will be totally ignored, with the film instead just focusing on the latter third of Michael’s musical career.
“This first film focuses on Michael from his roots,” Jaafar Jackson added. “So you get that idea of who he was before he had all the success and became the icon that people are familiar with, you understand who he was as a human being first, because at the end of the day, that’s who he was in the ’90s until he passed. He never changed that purity, that sense of always wanting to find the good in other people. And no matter all the stuff he went through, how he was treated, what things were said about him, he never stopped treating people with kindness. He never stopped believing in and wanting to look for the good in people… even though he was broken, his heart still stayed the same… I hope that this is felt in the second movie.”
Jaafar continued, “There’s been so many stories told about Michael from so many different people. This is to tell Michael’s story finally from the point of view of himself. There’s so much more to Michael’s story. There’s so much to who Michael was and how he expressed himself.”
