When your father’s name is Michael Jackson, people have expectations.
The children of celebrities inevitably provoke curiosity, but the Jackson children have been the objects of unparalleled public scrutiny since before they were born. The speculation over how they were conceived. The controversy of an overly excited Michael showing off his youngest to adoring fans by dangling him over a balcony. The fascination with the flamboyant masks their father used to keep them anonymous, the media frenzy that occurred whenever they showed their faces.
The concern that bordered on ownership so many felt when their father died in 2009 and then 12-year-old Prince Michael’s embrace of his grief-stricken sister Paris, then 11, at the funeral was broadcast to 31.1 million people in the U.S.
Even now, many people have certain expectations about the Jacksons and their future.
And Prince Michael Jackson does not seem at all concerned about any of them.
Providing a rare tour of his father’s Encino compound Hayvenhurst, he is, at 19, a young man prepared to set his own course, one that honors his father but does not imitate him.
“Everyone thinks I’m going to do music and dance,” he says, laughing wryly because, as he is the first to admit, he cannot do either.
Jackson is interested in producing entertainment but from behind the scenes. Earlier this year he produced his first music video, for Omer "O-Bee" Bhatti’s “Automatic,” and used it to launch King's Son Productions, the name a wink toward his father’s 1980s coronation as the King of Pop. Another video, for the Sco Triplets, soon followed.
Music is a big part of my life. It shaped who I am because of my family, but I’ve always wanted to go into production.— Prince Michael Jackson
“Music is a big part of my life,” Jackson says. “It shaped who I am because of my family, but I’ve always wanted to go into production. My dad would ask me what I wanted to do and my answer was always producing and directing.”
He speaks of his father with the easy fondness of many sons, just as he moves past iconic imagery and celebrity photos that adorn Hayvenhurst’s walls as if they were simply pictures of his family.
Which, of course, they are, just another sign of the extraordinary life that was Jackson’s normal for so many years, a contradiction he is quick to acknowledge.
“To me, these are family photos. It’s like, ‘Oh, that’s a picture of my dad and my godmother,’” Jackson says, pointing to an image of his father with Elizabeth Taylor.
And that’s the biggest expectation buster of them all. The most striking thing about spending time with Prince Michael Jackson is how much he reveals himself as a typical 19-year-old.
Infectiously charismatic and witty, with a handsome round face and dark eyes, he gets most animated when discussing his collegiate studies or weekend plans with his younger brother and their cousins (movies and video games were on the list).
Despite pursuing a career in entertainment, he prefers to keep a low profile. He stays away from gossip blogs and keeps social media at arm’s length, though he’s “getting out there more now with the company.”
The only outward reminder that his life isn’t typical comes during an earlier meeting when he declines to sit on the patio of a favorite sushi restaurant in order to evade paparazzi stalking Sunset Strip hot spots.
At times it’s tough to reconcile this easygoing young man with the flashy eccentricities that defined his family for so many years.
Yet on this sweltering summer afternoon in the Valley, Jackson is, in many ways, just a young man launching a business and retracing his father’s path.
He’s standing inside the Encino compound that’s been in the family for nearly a quarter century. The two-acre estate named for the street it’s on has served as inspiration for Jackson. Though the main house is under renovation, his younger sister Paris, now 18, lives in the guesthouse and Jackson visits often.
His late father’s imprint is all over it.
Michael lived here in the mid-’80s until he moved west to Santa Barbara County to his Neverland ranch in 1988. Hayvenhurst was a sanctuary away from fame that enveloped his life, the vastness of which becomes apparent the moment Jackson steps into the museum-like lounge Michael installed on the second level of a wing he added to the grounds.
A shrine to all the Jacksons had achieved by the early ’80s, the room is wallpapered with fame; hundreds of portraits are neatly collaged over its walls and ceilings.
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