Oprah Interviews Michael Jackson Accusers, Leaving Neverland Documentary Finally Convinced Me to Let Go of Michael Jackson, 30 Happy Songs to Play When You Want to Feel Good, Racial Bias in Healthcare Is a National Epidemic. Less than a year later, Jackson made headlines again when he married Lisa Marie Presley, the 26-year-old daughter of Elvis. "Anybody who knew Michael Jackson will tell you that when you are up close to himhe had absolutely no pigmentation in his skinyou are looking at his veins when you look at his hand. JACKSON: Because he -- he saw me -- he wanted me to -- I guess, maybe, I don't know if I was his golden child or whatever it was. BOTEACH: He puts on that black thing, that mask. I sat in my seat struggling with how to fit together the harrowing depiction of a sick man I had just witnessed with the icon who had shaped so much of my life. Would you trade it in for a normal childhood with the celebrity? He was the seventh of nine children. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's 50 years old. Where there is smoke, there is fire. In 1993, Winfrey was personally invited to Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch for an interview with the notoriously private star. And, as unconventional as it is, if you really look at it, it's sort of surrogate motherhood. OPRAH WINFREY, TALK SHOW HOST: So he would tease you, make fun of you? Oprah is the queen of this format (her 2021 conversation with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle is the most recent great example of the show-interview). When he answered no, she commented that she wouldnt be either. Michael Jackson was about to go from child pop star to the biggest star on the planet. Like what are we doing? ", If there's one dance move for which Michael will forever be remembered, it's unquestionably the moonwalk. BOTEACH: I said, look on the flip side of that. Beating, Joe maintained, is something you do with a stick. TOURE, FORMER CNN POP CULTURE ANALYST: The sound was incredible. Attorney Brian Oxman. The King of Pop was now a king in debt; a lavish lifestyle, and legal woes led him into near financial ruin. CNN has unearthed a 1993 Oprah Winfrey interview with Michael Jackson in which he addresses Pepsi's then plan to cast a white actor to play him as a child in his ill-fated advertisement for the . Several items were taken away. He was very, very controlled. LEMON: Fans wanted their last good-bye. Michael Jackson Talks . Michael Jackson, Oprah, Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Rowe and many other people watching MJ talking to Oprah on TV in a bedroom: Link: The Mexico Deposition in 1993 and "Dangerous . LEMON (on camera): Were you worried that he might not make it? BRIAN HIATT, "ROLLING STONE": Michael Jackson all but disappeared. THOMAS MESEREAU, LAWYER FOR MICHAEL JACKSON: It took a terrible toll. I tried to enhance the quality of. And he had this towering 270 million dollar debt. BOTEACH: The fact that he could even find himself in the situation after the '93 allegation shows he didn't take that sufficiently to heart, because if he did, he never would have been along with the child. We're going to sleep. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I need an ambulance as soon as possible. TOOBIN: He was emaciated. When Oprah broached the subject, Michael wouldn't get into specifics but said he'd had less plastic surgery than people thought. Simply titled "Bad." They just have that natural talent for dancing any of the new, hot dances. WINFREY: He did? Watching the two interviews back to back reveals an undeniable and astonishing fact: the biggest pop star the world had ever seen had become a completely different person in the intervening 14 years. And then he would dance, you know. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fifty, OK. You look like a monkey. LEMON: The soundtrack of a generation. An extended version of the special will also be available on Oprahs SuperSoul Conversations podcast starting Sunday, March 10. LIONEL RICHIE, MUSICIAN: Now, one great thing that happened that we both had to realize, I can't read or write music, and Michael cannot read or write music. The album was a smash with songs like "Don't Stop till You Get Enough" and "Rock with You," reaching number one. Leaving Neverland is about the childrenand adultswho are silenced by people like me who are quick to defend accusers simply because of their statusor the people who choose to live in silence because they are afraid of exactly that happening. A lot of people from the Mideast love Michael Jackson. It's about the fact that every 11 minutes in this country, child protective services substantiates or finds evidence for a claim of child sex abuseand that's just the ones we know about. But a lot of people think that he has bleached his skin. You are seeing through to the blue veins, and they're very, very apparent. Taking a cue from "Bad's" title, he became a crotch-grabbing tough guy, a far cry from his gentle, offstage personae. Even from the beginning, when they're nervously holding hands at MTV and he says, "Nobody thought this would last," and then he goes to kiss her. By the end of the documentary, I felt an unexpected emotion: numbness. These are not men who are fame hungry, or chasing money, or seeking to bring down a dead man. Flags at half staff, a memorial at his childhood home. None of those episodes, she goes on to say, illustrated that fact the way Reed's film did. But in this case, there is no separating the artist from the man. LEMON: It would take a year before a jury was seated and the trial began. Just last year, a study by the Census Bureau and Stanford University found that no matter what their parents income level, Black men are less successful than white men on average. (SINGING) (END VIDEOTAPE). While never forgetting any of the sexual details that happened between us, but having no understanding that it was abusehaving no concept in my mind that anything about Michael could ever badeverything that Michael did was right to me for so many years." JACKSON: This is it. (I should note that for the record, Leaving Neverland was in production long before Surviving R. Kelly aired.). Jackson would turn to Quincy Jones, then musical director for "The Wiz," now a multi Grammy winning producer, arranger, and composer. Were you as happy offstage as you were onstage?, Offstage I was very sad. DR. HAROLD, BURSZTAJN, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL: The fact that he has spent as much time as he has changing his face, changing his appearance, it's reminiscent of patients who suffer from body dysmorphic disorder, which is the condition where when a patient looks at themselves in the mirror, they just hate what they see. "My mother's wonderful. And they were expected to meet with L.A. police today. CHOPRA: It was the thing that caused his cardiac arrest. Michael Jackson talks to Oprah (1993) by Harpo Productions Publication date 1993 Topics Michael Jackson, Oprah, Oprah Winfrey, The Oprah Winfrey Show This is a UK airing of the famous interview of Michael Jackson by Oprah Winfrey in 1993. Its a magnetic, phantasmagoric ending. But Reed cleared up one important thing: Neither Robson nor Safechuck were paid to be a part of Leaving Neverland. Then in 1996, Jackson sent shock waves around the world when it was announced he had married Debbie Rowe, his dermatologist nurse. LEMON: Ten million dollars a year he could no longer afford. LEMON: When we return, Michael on-stage the night before he died. Record producer Ronnie Jerkins worked with Jackson. He felt almost abandoned, even though he was acquitted of the charges. CRAIG MARKS, FORMER EDITOR, "BLENDER" MAGAZINE: Hysterical adulation does play tricks with your mind. This man through his music actually like made a change in the world. And I called Mr. Gordy and I said, I've just seen the most fantastic act. Around 62 million viewers in the United States and 90 million worldwide watched the interview live, although some estimates, such as the one offered by Winfreys biographer, Kitty Kelley, claim it was higher at 100 million. to Oprah" interview. I mean, everybody wants immortality. When we continue, chimps, oxygen chambers, the elephant man's bones -- Michael Jackson's bizarre behavior. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) LEMON: By the early 1990s, Michael Jackson's new music, even fresh R&B hits like "Remember the Time," couldn't come close to the phenomenon he had created with "Thriller." According to Winfrey, the conversation was unscripted and uncensored. xD Cicely Tyson passed away on January 28, 2021. And with that historic piece of vinyl, a phenomenon was born. And that is something that is happening every single day in this country at the hands of far less powerful people. BRAFMAN: He always appeared to either be in pain or walking with pain. And is aid to him, take that stupid thing off! It was the kind of attention and screams he was accustomed to. Oprahs assumed naivet achieves complicity with both Michael and the viewer, and on television complicity allows for everything. I have loved Michael Jackson the artist for several decades. LEMON: An audition seen in this video from a documentary produced by Michael Jackson. I'd like to take a shot at producing your record. I know the creator will go, but his work survives. It was a tense atmosphere, given that MJ didn't take part in an interview for 14 years. Tern claims the visual aspect very subtly [drew] Michael Jacksons personality, that outdated mogul thing. In March, 1988, Jackson finalized the purchase of a 2,600 acre ranch. Oprahs interview succeeded in reducing Jacksons image from lunatic to simply eccentric, wrote The Washington Post shortly thereafter. So an auction of his most personal items seemed like the answer. LEMON: By 1975, the Jackson 5 had made a highly publicized split from Motown. LEMON: The king of pop. Tern notes that he believes that Michael thought the interview would clean up his image, but instead it showed the grandiloquence of his fame, of having no childhood, which knocks a person off kilter forever.. TARABORELLI: Nothing was the same after "Thriller." Every day, Michael Jackson showed up in one of his Captain Crunch outfits. Tickets sold out within hours. But in January of that year, Michael had just headlined the Super Bowl halftime show (the staging and format of which provided the template for todays artists performing at the years biggest football game) and won three American Music Awards. I had go-to lines about being able to separate the art from the man; about how Jackson was certainly an oddball with an affinity for children because of his own troubled upbringing, but that didn't make him a criminal; about how there was never any real proof that he had abused children.