Is that really appropriate for a man, a grown man to be doing that? >> joy and peace. That is what I want the world to feel. Why can’t you share your bed? That the the most loving thing to do is to share your bed with someone. >> Michael Jackson is back in a massive way, back at the top of the charts, back making billions of dollars at the cinema, and for Netflix he’s generating huge numbers of streams in a documentary that I don’t think he’s estate would like very much.
I’m joined by Christian at the front producer and Jasper Lee our audio lead to talk about the legacy of Michael Jackson and the way his estate is remaking his image for a new generation. Jasper, let me start with you. You’re a musician and and grew up kind of in the Michael Jackson heyday, the 80s and 90s not to age you. Um Why was Michael Jackson the defining pop star of our childhoods and and again now? >> I think to understand how he became this global superstar, you have to look at his pedigree and appreciate the fact that he essentially grew up in a blast
furnace of music entertainment. >> [music] [music] >> Starting his career with the Jackson 5, but importantly going through the rigors of showbiz training at Motown under people like Berry Gordy and Diana Ross, but also having first hand access to Stevie Wonder. Basically as a kid and then going on to being selected by the Motown machine to have his own solo career that eventually went stratospheric when he left Motown, signed with Epic Records and essentially traded Berry Gordy in for Quincy Jones.
>> [music] >> He’s back though, Chrissy, isn’t he? In a way that the other artists of the ’80s are not. Even artists who were themselves highly influential um um and and exceptional performers. Can you just describe for me the way Michael Jackson has come back as a cultural force? Um his song Chicago, for example, is it was at the top of the Billboard R&B charts not long ago.
> Yeah, I think it’s undeniable at this point in time that social media is is probably feeding this beast, if you want to put it that way. Um so, it is ubiquitous, I guess. It’s very easily accessible, not to mention um streaming apps like Spotify. Um Michael Jackson is arguably more accessible than he has ever been to on the planet with an internet connection or not.
>> Spread love, joy, and peace. That is what I want the world to feel. >> Um but we’ve seen in the last couple of months the biopic that’s come out with Michael Jackson’s nephew Jaafar Jackson playing him. Um and as I understand it, his performance as Michael Jackson has been largely praised. Um however, critics have said that this film, which is produced by and large by Michael Jackson’s estate, uh is a sanitization of the serious allegations that were made against him over the course of his life and career. Um and
now we’ve arrived at the place where the um the Netflix documentary machine has decided to reassess this issue, which never really went away, um but it seems to be that this this is providing if you want to call it a counterpoint to that film that, despite the criticisms of it as I understand it, has made almost a billion dollars globally.
It’s been very commercially successful. >> Yeah, I think that it’s definitely, um fans who are driving that that movie because, you know, I think the one thing you know about it going in is that it’s not going to touch on the sexual abuse allegations that he faced throughout his life.
He was, of course, acquitted of charges relating to the abuse of um of children, and he always denied any wrongdoing. But, he’s been the subject of repeated allegations by multiple people who are now adults that he was a pedophile. Uh his estate has settled claims against him by um some of these people. There’s now a legal dispute going on with one family in particular, the Cascio family, who say that they were all abused, four children were all abused by him over the years, and their accounts are incredibly compelling.
That’s what the documentary touches on in part. Um it Does it go further than the Leaving Neverland documentary that was so kind of seismic about Michael Jackson a few years ago? It it doesn’t focus so much on the allegations, and I know that that’s a quite a strange thing to say. Um what it actually looks at is the justice system in relation to this issue and the media in relation to this issue, how it was reported, uh how people reacted to it.
So, it is a kind of an a cultural assessment, I guess, in that perspective. >> I walked into what looked like a circus. >> We believed he was a criminal, and he was able to get away with it because of his fame and celebrity. >> It was very moving testimony. >> It really got to me. >> Leaving Neverland was really hard to watch because it didn’t shy away from those very very serious allegations and that lived experience.
Actually in the new documentary The Verdict on Netflix, we don’t have victims’ voices other than what was said in court and the um the evidence that they gave, the statements that they made to um prosecutors and to police. Um what there is are members of the media, investigative journalists, there are members of Michael Jackson’s staff.
Um there are his close friends, his biographer is in it. Um and there are also jurors, which is a feature of the American system that jurors can be interviewed by media uh after a matter has concluded. Um we can’t do that here in Australia. So we actually get the perspective of some of the people who were on the jury and who ultimately acquitted Michael Jackson of those charges.
> I think in that documentary also we see a little bit of the interview that he did with Martin Bashir, the British journalist famously who interviewed Princess Diana as well. >> Do you think Mrs. Parker Bowles was a factor in the breakdown of your marriage? >> Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.
> [snorts] >> In that interview with Princess Diana, he’s been accused particularly by Diana’s sons of manipulating her into giving the interview. In the interview with Michael Jackson, which interestingly has become this battleground on social media now. There’s millions of TikTok clips from that interview either accusing Martin Bashir of being unethical or um or pointing out that Michael Jackson admits in the interview to sleeping in the same bed as children who are not his own children.
>> And they say is that really appropriate for a man, a grown man, to be doing that? How do you respond to that? >> I feel sorry for them because they’re just judging someone who just wants to really help people. Why can’t you share your bed? But the most loving thing to do is to share your bed with someone. >> What did you think watching that Martin Bashir footage again? >> I found it chilling.
I guess when that interview originally aired, I was quite a bit younger. Um I was broadly aware of of the commentary around Michael Jackson at that time, but um all I really knew was his music. Um watching it back now as an adult and as an adult working in the media in a post-Epstein world in a post-Me Too world, it was absolutely chilling that he felt so confident in his beliefs and his choices that he would openly admit to that on camera with one of the children in question sitting beside him holding his hand.
Um it was really, really hard to watch. >> He also says in that interview that he hasn’t had any plastic surgery, hasn’t had anything done to his nose, which at this stage is like a ski jump, you know. He hasn’t changed his skin, he um he he he he claims that um his children who were born to a surrogate mother were both born to black women, although Martin Bashir has some incredulity about this and says, “But these children are basically white, you know, how can that possibly be?” Michael Jackson seems to be to my eyes, you know,
living in a fantasy world. Like he’s living in a world created of his own his own beliefs where he’s, you know, he’s not offending against children, his children are black, um and he hasn’t had anything done to his face. It’s it’s really um it’s interesting to me that one of the takeaways from people is that Martin Bashir was doing something wrong there.
You know, you can criticize the way he got Princess Diana to talk to him, and it sounds like he did um manipulate some documents allegedly in that case, but I mean, the the accusation against him in Michael Jackson’s case is that he spent 8 months with Michael Jackson. Um like what’s wrong with that? >> Yeah, that’s journalism.
>> Yeah. >> It’s um and it’s journalism um that was invited in. Um but I think it’s also goes to that point of what the commentary was at the time or how that was received at the time and what it’s like now to watch it. But even I remember people saying that Michael Jackson was like a kid himself that he’d had a very difficult life and particularly coming up through that Motown machine as I understand that there was abuse allegedly in the Jackson family um and that any child star as we now I think are well aware has a pretty
tough time in in Hollywood uh and in the music industry that he was sort of stuck as a child and that that kind of it wasn’t a justification for but that it went some of the way people felt to explaining his explanation of that behavior. He lived at a theme park. Um he spent he seemed to be more comfortable around children.
>> And chimps. >> And he Exactly. [laughter] >> His best friend was a chimp. >> Exactly, yes. And and and maybe people who don’t judge him or you know who don’t ask the hard questions and don’t hold him to account for those actions because in the Michael Jackson: The Verdict documentary on Netflix we hear that there were staff members at Neverland who allegedly saw things and never spoke up about it and you know you could go down a rabbit hole of talking about who should have said what and when and to who.
Um but yeah, it seems to be that this idea is persisting of Michael was like a child himself. And maybe that explains some of what went on and maybe that explains some of his mindset in that Martin Bashir interview in that he seems to genuinely believe what he’s saying. >> Yeah, and and genuinely believe that people aren’t going to, uh, people people will accept the weirdness.
It’s almost like being weird in plain sight is enough to help you get away with kind of doing whatever you want to do and saying whatever you want to say. There’s a theory that people who go through trauma are frozen in time at the time of that trauma. And so, um, children who are abused might have stru- might have struggles maturing, basically.
Um, there’s also a huge amount of evidence that people who are victims of abuse are, um, are prone to re-victimization and are also prone to becoming perpetrators themselves because their ideas of love and intimacy are have been broken and and damaged. I just don’t get why we can’t hold the two things simultaneously that Michael all three things, that Michael Jackson was a victim, that he was a perpetrator, and that he was a genius.
> Mhm. >> But [clears throat] do we have to, um, do we have to bring him back? Like, does the world need Michael Jackson today? I think it’s a really interesting thing about proximity. We discovered in the past kind of couple of years, thanks to Anna Funder’s book, that George Orwell was a creep and a misogynist and a liar.
Um, but he was still a genius, I think, you know, one of the greatest writers the world has ever known. >> Mhm. >> Um, I’m still going to be reading George Orwell’s works and I still find his work very influential on what I hope to write. But, um, the fact that Michael Jackson has only been dead for, you know, coming up to two decades now, I I feel it’s still too it’s too soon.
Like, it’s too soon to be rehabilitated. >> Mhm. >> It’s interesting in the States, like he never went away. Mhm. You know, even after Finding Neverland came out, I mean, it obviously impacted certain aspects of society, but my sense over there is like he’s still held up by a lot of people as this godlike figure.
>> And it seems though to do that they have to deny that these people who say that they are victims are telling the truth. It’s like >> Well, that’s it, isn’t it? Or it’s a sort of like a selective passing of bits like it’s a selective sort of passing of the story >> Mhm. >> for different people. >> We end up though in a place in 2026 where um we’re denying the claims of children who said that they were abused.
Like to your point earlier about living in a post-Epstein and post-Me Too world. You know, is it like well, we believe all victims except if they were Michael Jackson’s victims? >> I don’t necessarily think it’s about disbelieving people. I think actually we’ve come a really long way in that respect and that’s why the Netflix documentary is so interesting to look back at A how the justice system treated victims, but I’ve been thinking about this for days because I knew that we would have this conversation and where I’ve kind of
landed is that you can’t unscramble an egg. Um that it’s one thing to maybe decide to not consume Michael Jackson’s music directly. Um and a question for for people themselves is would we want to do that because of how richly um and creatively he has contributed to Western culture in particular. Um but I wonder if we’ve got to the point and I certainly feel this kind of level of exhaustion where it’s getting really hard to find the ray of light.
>> Mhm. >> Where it’s we’re looking at these issues we’ve had in a very short space of time. We’ve lived through a pandemic, the Me Too movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, a very divisive and ongoing conflict in the Middle East, um and now just the eternal horror of the Epstein files. Um can we really be expected to think critically when we’re sitting at the pub with our friends and the DJ puts a Michael Jackson song on? Um >> Isn’t the music the ray of light? You know, that that an abuse victim who was
himself a perpetrator could create or participate in the creation of transcendent joyful music. >> Yes. Isn’t it that simple? >> It’s hard if you can compartmentalize those things. And I think some people can, I think some people can’t. I think there’s this definitely now a younger generation who are, you know, very ethically minded when it comes to the clothes that they buy or, you know, the the products that they want, you know, the products that they buy.
And I think that extends to music as well, where it’s sort of like they do look at the full picture. And um no matter how good it is, it’s like they can’t kind of ignore the fact that they are affected by the allegations. Um Comes down to the individual, I think. But I mean, I I think about this all the time.
It’s like if we only and I’m not, you know, if we only can if we only read books by, you know, ethically sound authors or appreciated art created by ethically sound artists, um you know, the the list of what we the list of what is available to us might be a lot smaller than we are happy with. You know, it’s sort of like it’s an very uncomfortable truth.
> Thanks, guys. >> Thank you.
The new Michael Jackson fans who don’t want to hear the truth
Is that really appropriate for a man, a grown man to be doing that? >> joy and peace. That is what I want the world to feel. Why can’t you share your bed? That the the most loving thing to do is to share your bed with someone. >> Michael Jackson is back in a massive way, back at the top of the charts, back making billions of dollars at the cinema, and for Netflix he’s generating huge numbers of streams in a documentary that I don’t think he’s estate would like very much.
I’m joined by Christian at the front producer and Jasper Lee our audio lead to talk about the legacy of Michael Jackson and the way his estate is remaking his image for a new generation. Jasper, let me start with you. You’re a musician and and grew up kind of in the Michael Jackson heyday, the 80s and 90s not to age you. Um Why was Michael Jackson the defining pop star of our childhoods and and again now? >> I think to understand how he became this global superstar, you have to look at his pedigree and appreciate the fact that he essentially grew up in a blast
furnace of music entertainment. >> [music] [music] >> Starting his career with the Jackson 5, but importantly going through the rigors of showbiz training at Motown under people like Berry Gordy and Diana Ross, but also having first hand access to Stevie Wonder. Basically as a kid and then going on to being selected by the Motown machine to have his own solo career that eventually went stratospheric when he left Motown, signed with Epic Records and essentially traded Berry Gordy in for Quincy Jones.
>> [music] >> He’s back though, Chrissy, isn’t he? In a way that the other artists of the ’80s are not. Even artists who were themselves highly influential um um and and exceptional performers. Can you just describe for me the way Michael Jackson has come back as a cultural force? Um his song Chicago, for example, is it was at the top of the Billboard R&B charts not long ago.
>> Yeah, I think it’s undeniable at this point in time that social media is is probably feeding this beast, if you want to put it that way. Um so, it is ubiquitous, I guess. It’s very easily accessible, not to mention um streaming apps like Spotify. Um Michael Jackson is arguably more accessible than he has ever been to on the planet with an internet connection or not.
>> Spread love, joy, and peace. That is what I want the world to feel. >> Um but we’ve seen in the last couple of months the biopic that’s come out with Michael Jackson’s nephew Jaafar Jackson playing him. Um and as I understand it, his performance as Michael Jackson has been largely praised. Um however, critics have said that this film, which is produced by and large by Michael Jackson’s estate, uh is a sanitization of the serious allegations that were made against him over the course of his life and career. Um and
now we’ve arrived at the place where the um the Netflix documentary machine has decided to reassess this issue, which never really went away, um but it seems to be that this this is providing if you want to call it a counterpoint to that film that, despite the criticisms of it as I understand it, has made almost a billion dollars globally.
It’s been very commercially successful. >> Yeah, I think that it’s definitely, um fans who are driving that that movie because, you know, I think the one thing you know about it going in is that it’s not going to touch on the sexual abuse allegations that he faced throughout his life.
He was, of course, acquitted of charges relating to the abuse of um of children, and he always denied any wrongdoing. But, he’s been the subject of repeated allegations by multiple people who are now adults that he was a pedophile. Uh his estate has settled claims against him by um some of these people. There’s now a legal dispute going on with one family in particular, the Cascio family, who say that they were all abused, four children were all abused by him over the years, and their accounts are incredibly compelling.
That’s what the documentary touches on in part. Um it Does it go further than the Leaving Neverland documentary that was so kind of seismic about Michael Jackson a few years ago? It it doesn’t focus so much on the allegations, and I know that that’s a quite a strange thing to say. Um what it actually looks at is the justice system in relation to this issue and the media in relation to this issue, how it was reported, uh how people reacted to it.
So, it is a kind of an a cultural assessment, I guess, in that perspective. >> I walked into what looked like a circus. >> We believed he was a criminal, and he was able to get away with it because of his fame and celebrity. >> It was very moving testimony. >> It really got to me. >> Leaving Neverland was really hard to watch because it didn’t shy away from those very very serious allegations and that lived experience.
Actually in the new documentary The Verdict on Netflix, we don’t have victims’ voices other than what was said in court and the um the evidence that they gave, the statements that they made to um prosecutors and to police. Um what there is are members of the media, investigative journalists, there are members of Michael Jackson’s staff.
Um there are his close friends, his biographer is in it. Um and there are also jurors, which is a feature of the American system that jurors can be interviewed by media uh after a matter has concluded. Um we can’t do that here in Australia. So we actually get the perspective of some of the people who were on the jury and who ultimately acquitted Michael Jackson of those charges.
>> I think in that documentary also we see a little bit of the interview that he did with Martin Bashir, the British journalist famously who interviewed Princess Diana as well. >> Do you think Mrs. Parker Bowles was a factor in the breakdown of your marriage? >> Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.
>> [snorts] >> In that interview with Princess Diana, he’s been accused particularly by Diana’s sons of manipulating her into giving the interview. In the interview with Michael Jackson, which interestingly has become this battleground on social media now. There’s millions of TikTok clips from that interview either accusing Martin Bashir of being unethical or um or pointing out that Michael Jackson admits in the interview to sleeping in the same bed as children who are not his own children.
>> And they say is that really appropriate for a man, a grown man, to be doing that? How do you respond to that? >> I feel sorry for them because they’re just judging someone who just wants to really help people. Why can’t you share your bed? But the most loving thing to do is to share your bed with someone. >> What did you think watching that Martin Bashir footage again? >> I found it chilling.
I guess when that interview originally aired, I was quite a bit younger. Um I was broadly aware of of the commentary around Michael Jackson at that time, but um all I really knew was his music. Um watching it back now as an adult and as an adult working in the media in a post-Epstein world in a post-Me Too world, it was absolutely chilling that he felt so confident in his beliefs and his choices that he would openly admit to that on camera with one of the children in question sitting beside him holding his hand.
Um it was really, really hard to watch. >> He also says in that interview that he hasn’t had any plastic surgery, hasn’t had anything done to his nose, which at this stage is like a ski jump, you know. He hasn’t changed his skin, he um he he he he claims that um his children who were born to a surrogate mother were both born to black women, although Martin Bashir has some incredulity about this and says, “But these children are basically white, you know, how can that possibly be?” Michael Jackson seems to be to my eyes, you know,
living in a fantasy world. Like he’s living in a world created of his own his own beliefs where he’s, you know, he’s not offending against children, his children are black, um and he hasn’t had anything done to his face. It’s it’s really um it’s interesting to me that one of the takeaways from people is that Martin Bashir was doing something wrong there.
You know, you can criticize the way he got Princess Diana to talk to him, and it sounds like he did um manipulate some documents allegedly in that case, but I mean, the the accusation against him in Michael Jackson’s case is that he spent 8 months with Michael Jackson. Um like what’s wrong with that? >> Yeah, that’s journalism.
>> Yeah. >> It’s um and it’s journalism um that was invited in. Um but I think it’s also goes to that point of what the commentary was at the time or how that was received at the time and what it’s like now to watch it. But even I remember people saying that Michael Jackson was like a kid himself that he’d had a very difficult life and particularly coming up through that Motown machine as I understand that there was abuse allegedly in the Jackson family um and that any child star as we now I think are well aware has a pretty
tough time in in Hollywood uh and in the music industry that he was sort of stuck as a child and that that kind of it wasn’t a justification for but that it went some of the way people felt to explaining his explanation of that behavior. He lived at a theme park. Um he spent he seemed to be more comfortable around children.
>> And chimps. >> And he Exactly. [laughter] >> His best friend was a chimp. >> Exactly, yes. And and and maybe people who don’t judge him or you know who don’t ask the hard questions and don’t hold him to account for those actions because in the Michael Jackson: The Verdict documentary on Netflix we hear that there were staff members at Neverland who allegedly saw things and never spoke up about it and you know you could go down a rabbit hole of talking about who should have said what and when and to who.
Um but yeah, it seems to be that this idea is persisting of Michael was like a child himself. And maybe that explains some of what went on and maybe that explains some of his mindset in that Martin Bashir interview in that he seems to genuinely believe what he’s saying. >> Yeah, and and genuinely believe that people aren’t going to, uh, people people will accept the weirdness.
It’s almost like being weird in plain sight is enough to help you get away with kind of doing whatever you want to do and saying whatever you want to say. There’s a theory that people who go through trauma are frozen in time at the time of that trauma. And so, um, children who are abused might have stru- might have struggles maturing, basically.
Um, there’s also a huge amount of evidence that people who are victims of abuse are, um, are prone to re-victimization and are also prone to becoming perpetrators themselves because their ideas of love and intimacy are have been broken and and damaged. I just don’t get why we can’t hold the two things simultaneously that Michael all three things, that Michael Jackson was a victim, that he was a perpetrator, and that he was a genius.
>> Mhm. >> But [clears throat] do we have to, um, do we have to bring him back? Like, does the world need Michael Jackson today? I think it’s a really interesting thing about proximity. We discovered in the past kind of couple of years, thanks to Anna Funder’s book, that George Orwell was a creep and a misogynist and a liar.
Um, but he was still a genius, I think, you know, one of the greatest writers the world has ever known. >> Mhm. >> Um, I’m still going to be reading George Orwell’s works and I still find his work very influential on what I hope to write. But, um, the fact that Michael Jackson has only been dead for, you know, coming up to two decades now, I I feel it’s still too it’s too soon.
Like, it’s too soon to be rehabilitated. >> Mhm. >> It’s interesting in the States, like he never went away. Mhm. You know, even after Finding Neverland came out, I mean, it obviously impacted certain aspects of society, but my sense over there is like he’s still held up by a lot of people as this godlike figure.
>> And it seems though to do that they have to deny that these people who say that they are victims are telling the truth. It’s like >> Well, that’s it, isn’t it? Or it’s a sort of like a selective passing of bits like it’s a selective sort of passing of the story >> Mhm. >> for different people. >> We end up though in a place in 2026 where um we’re denying the claims of children who said that they were abused.
Like to your point earlier about living in a post-Epstein and post-Me Too world. You know, is it like well, we believe all victims except if they were Michael Jackson’s victims? >> I don’t necessarily think it’s about disbelieving people. I think actually we’ve come a really long way in that respect and that’s why the Netflix documentary is so interesting to look back at A how the justice system treated victims, but I’ve been thinking about this for days because I knew that we would have this conversation and where I’ve kind of
landed is that you can’t unscramble an egg. Um that it’s one thing to maybe decide to not consume Michael Jackson’s music directly. Um and a question for for people themselves is would we want to do that because of how richly um and creatively he has contributed to Western culture in particular. Um but I wonder if we’ve got to the point and I certainly feel this kind of level of exhaustion where it’s getting really hard to find the ray of light.
>> Mhm. >> Where it’s we’re looking at these issues we’ve had in a very short space of time. We’ve lived through a pandemic, the Me Too movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, a very divisive and ongoing conflict in the Middle East, um and now just the eternal horror of the Epstein files. Um can we really be expected to think critically when we’re sitting at the pub with our friends and the DJ puts a Michael Jackson song on? Um >> Isn’t the music the ray of light? You know, that that an abuse victim who was
himself a perpetrator could create or participate in the creation of transcendent joyful music. >> Yes. Isn’t it that simple? >> It’s hard if you can compartmentalize those things. And I think some people can, I think some people can’t. I think there’s this definitely now a younger generation who are, you know, very ethically minded when it comes to the clothes that they buy or, you know, the the products that they want, you know, the products that they buy.
And I think that extends to music as well, where it’s sort of like they do look at the full picture. And um no matter how good it is, it’s like they can’t kind of ignore the fact that they are affected by the allegations. Um Comes down to the individual, I think. But I mean, I I think about this all the time.
It’s like if we only and I’m not, you know, if we only can if we only read books by, you know, ethically sound authors or appreciated art created by ethically sound artists, um you know, the the list of what we the list of what is available to us might be a lot smaller than we are happy with. You know, it’s sort of like it’s an very uncomfortable truth.
>> Thanks, guys. >> Thank you.
