Michael Actor Responds to ‘Whitewashing’ Abuse Claims to Say Allegations May Be Dealt With in a Sequel

One of the main actors in the Michael Jackson biopic has defended the film from “’whitewashing” claims, pointing to the potential for a sequel to deal with sexual abuse allegations.

Michael does not feature any scenes dealing with the singer’s high-profile child abuse allegations after they were cut from the film, allegedly forcing reshoots that added $15 million to the budget.

Variety has reported that Michael, which sees Michael Jackson’s real-life nephew Jaafar Jackson play the title role, was meant to include a scene in which police arrive at Neverland Ranch to search for evidence of child abuse in 1993, but it does not appear in the final cut.

This is allegedly one of many scenes that were meant to explore this part of Jackson’s life in the third act of the movie, but were all cut because attorneys for the Jackson estate “realized there was a clause in a settlement with one of the singer’s accusers, Jordan Chandler, that barred the depiction or mention of him in any movie.” Michael Jackson had denied all allegations, and his estate continues to deny the claims.

This sparked $15 million dollars worth of reshoots and a new ending, Variety reported, contributing to a delay to the movie’s release from April last year to this spring. The Jackson estate covered the cost because the error was theirs, Variety said, but it now has an equity stake in the film.

Now, Michael ends with a scene set during Jackson’s Bad tour, which ran from 1987 to 1989. There isn’t a single mention of the child abuse allegations at any point in the movie. It revolves around the music and Jackson’s troubled relationship with his father, Joe, played by Colman Domingo.

And it was Domingo who this week defended Michael from the “whitewashing” claims by suggesting a sequel could continue Michael Jackson’s story on from 1988. Speaking in an interview on the Today show, Domingo said Michael is focused on “the makings of Michael.”

“The film does stop in 1988, several years before the first child molestation allegations were made. And we live in an environment now where we take survivors of sexual abuse, we take their stories very seriously,” interviewer Craig Melvin began. “What would you say to folks who see this and they’re like, ‘You know what? They whitewashed that part. They didn’t even include that part.’ How do you reconcile your performance with that?”

“The film takes place from the ‘60s to 1988, so it does not go into the first allegations,” Domingo said in an interview on the Today show. “We center it on the makings of Michael. It’s an intimate portrait of who Michael is. Through his eyes, truly. So that’s what it is. So that’s what this film is.

“And there’s a possibility of there being a Part Two, that may deal with some other things that happened afterwards. This is about the making of Michael, how he was raised, and then how he was trying to find his voice as an artist and be a solo artist.

“There could be a sequel. We don’t know yet.”

Is a Michael sequel likely? According to Variety, Michael is aiming for $65 million to $70 million from 3,900 North American theaters in its opening weekend, but that figure could rise to a whopping $80 million. It’s almost certainly going to be the largest debut ever for a musical biopic.

So, assuming the box office plays out the way it looks like it will, a sequel is perhaps more likely than unlikely. But even if it were greenlit, surely it would run up against the same issue Michael did, given the settlement clause.

In September last year, Jackson’s daughter, Paris, criticized the “sugar-coated” biopic about her father, saying it “panders to a very specific section of my dad’s fandom that still lives in the fantasy.”

“I read one of the first drafts of the script and gave my notes about what was dishonest / didn’t sit right with me, and when they didn’t address it, I moved on with my life,” Paris said in a social media post. “Not my monkeys, not my circus. God bless and God speed.”

“So I just butted out and left it alone because it’s not my project,” she added. “They’re going to make whatever they’re going to make. A big reason why I haven’t said anything up until this point is because I know a lot of you guys are gonna be happy with it.

“A big section of the film panders to a very specific section of my dad’s fandom that still lives in the fantasy, and they’re gonna be happy with it.

“The narrative is being controlled and there’s a lot of inaccuracy and there’s a lot of just full-blown lies. At the end of the day, that doesn’t really fly with me. Go enjoy it. Do whatever. Leave me out of it.”

Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].