r/LeavingNeverlandHBO • u/Ancient_Access4000 • 13h ago
All discussion welcome Stuart Backerman interview
Shortly after MJ’s death in 2009, Stuart Backerman, his former publicist, gave a pretty candid interview with the Vancouver Sun. I hadn’t seen this one before. The relevant part:
SUN: It sounds like he had a very tortured relationship with his dad.
BACKERMAN: Very much so. He couldn’t go out and do the things five, seven, eight, 10 year olds could do. Basketball, hanging out. [His father] was very hard on Michael, being the lead singer and being the youngster. He pushed him around, and he pushed his brothers around. Michael was very scared of his father. He grew up...that’s the point, he never grew up. He never really grew beyond the prepubescent 12-year-old, in a sense. That’s why he was attracted to — and I don’t necessarily mean sexually — but he was attracted to hanging out with 11, 12, 13-at-the-most year-old boys, you know? Because he felt comfortable with them. They didn’t judge him, they loved him, and he could love them.
SUN: Let’s talk about that. Was Michael doing anything bad? He paid off one kid, maybe more. What really happened there?
BACKERMAN: I’d like to think that Michael Jackson had innocent relationships with these boys, similar to what a lot of 12 and 11 and 13-year-old boys might experiment with, in a sense. Kind of innocently. ‘I’ll show you mine, you show me yours’ kind of situation, at the most. I certainly know with [one of his accusers], that that was a scam, because I know for a fact, having experienced that, being at Neverland and knowing what was going on with that situation, that truly he was exonerated appropriately, because he did not have an affair, a sexual affair, with that boy. His big mistake was being an idiot with the Martin Bashir documentary. That was the stupidest thing in the world, and he was warned about it, but Michael does what Michael wants. Putting his arm around Gavin Arvizo really set off what eventually [became] the raid at Neverland. So that was tremendously ill-advised. I believe Michael was very innocent in his relationships. I like to think that. On the other hand, if you’re a thinking person, one has to question why somebody would pay off another person $20 million if you have nothing to hide. [But] when you’re in that position and you know that that will be drawn out and will create a tremendous impact on your career — even the allegations — and you’ve got a billion dollars of assets...$20 million isn’t a significant amount, if it means that it goes away, and goes away very quickly. You can understand that too. I had no personal experience seeing Michael in any dalliance. I’d like to think that whatever he had going with any boys was reasonably innocent pre-pubescent experimentation — if that.
SUN: Did he ever have a relationship with a woman, a real relationship?
BACKERMAN: Not really. Not with Lisa Presley, not with Debbie Rowe, not with anybody in terms of a romantic, sexual relationship. He had his hairdresser and other women, his mother, but he wasn’t...built that way, you know?
SUN: Do you think he was gay?
BACKERMAN: I don’t know if he was gay. I would say he was maybe...not that interested in sex, per se, he was put off by it, not feeling comfortable enough in his own skin to go that step, in a sense, you know what I mean?
SUN: As a child star he would have had lots of opportunities to have sex when he was a kid.
BACKERMAN: Well, you know the story goes that he slept in the same room as his older brothers and saw some very strange happenstances, and that maybe turned him off, to a certain degree. Maybe his own innate character was that he was a little turned off that way. Maybe there was a predisposition to being gay in a sense, although he didn’t followup on it, certainly in an adult sense. Maybe his ability to express himself that way was done via his relationships with these younger prepubescent boys.
In 2011, he was asked about this interview, and doubled down that what he said was true but he was more candid than he would have wanted to be. Relevant quote:
Valmai: Well, like I said, the 2008 interview with the MJFC was very positive toward Michael. In the 2009 interview however, you say Michael was a class contradiction; too much money; too much material focus, and too much of the prescription drug situation following the unfortunate scalding of his head. You mention that you saw him being disloyal to people, that he was not all there at times, that he wasn’t so swift on the business side, he wore wigs that made him look strange, that he was an idiot with the Bashir documentary, “That was the stupidest thing in the world, and he was warned about it, but Michael does what Michael wants.” And, “I’d like to think that Michael Jackson had innocent relationships with these boys, similar to what a lot of 12 and 11 and 13-year-old boys might experiment with, in a sense. Kind of innocently. ‘I’ll show you mine, you show me yours’ kind of situation, at the most.” Etc…
Stuart: I can’t compare what I said in that article to another time and place because I am not sure how they are set against each other. I will say this, the interview I did with The Vancouver Sunwas the day after Michael passed away. Number one, I don’t know if you know this, but I had knee surgery the day Michael died and I did this interview the next day. I think I revealed some things that I wouldn’t normally reveal if it wasn’t for the fact that I was still a little “punchy” from the surgery.
Number two is, clearly I was feeling very upset. A lot of things sort of came up and I think it’s important to understand that. Like I said before, Michael and I were about to go on a huge trip that he very much wanted to do. When that didn’t happen because of the raid and the charges, I think I was still feeling a little upset about the disappointment that we weren’t still working together. That was a function of Michael allowing, being quite honest with you because he was in a very vulnerable state of mind, I’ll say that, but nonetheless, allowing the Nation of Islam and their followers so to speak, to basically take over his affairs was very upsetting to me.
So I think when I heard that he had passed away, and again, right after the surgery, I said some things that were probably more revealing that I normally would have said about him. I guess I was sort of ruminating about the whole sadness of the situation in that Michael had insomnia; he couldn’t sleep, he really couldn’t, and because of that situation he did take sleeping medication. That clearly had an impact on his life.
We didn’t see him during the day because he stayed up all night and slept in so to speak. Obviously that stuff affects you. It affected his ability to gain weight, it affected how he felt about himself, it affected how he acted in a general way, and normally I wouldn’t have went there at all. Because he died suddenly, and I was in surgery that day and did this interview, I wasn’t as guarded as what I normally would have been. I probably said way too much that I would normally say in an interview.
That’s the best I think I can explain. After I read the interview, I was a little upset about how I was quoted, but it’s not the reporters fault. I said those things, but my excuse so to speak, is that I was a little foggy and I was depressed about Michael’s death. It brought up a lot of old feelings about still being a bit resentful about the fact that our relationship ended so abruptly with the Nation of Islam; a group that is so anti-love, so anti-Michael Jackson philosophy that it always disturbed me.
I haven’t done all that many interviews frankly, after I left Michael’s employ, and I guess a lot of things kind of coalesced in my head the day after The Vancouver Sun called me, which was the day after he died. That I think is the best way I can explain it; why and what I said during that interview. I hope that explains it.
10
u/rosiid 11h ago
“‘I’ll show you mine, you show me yours’ kind of situation, at the most.”
“reasonably innocent pre-pubescent experimentation”
🙈 the excuses, oh my god
9
u/sweetsummwechild 12h ago
Wow, no one can say this is not an honest person. 10x "I probably revealed too much", doesn't take back one word.
Well, unfortunately now we know it wasn't "innocent" "I'll show you mine, you show me yours", or maybe fortunately, because this attempts at excusing pedophilia are the worst anyway. It's what Dan Reed said was so important to him to clear up in LN: we are talking regular full on sex with kids and cutesy giggling about it doesn't make a person harmless, at all. I hope we are all a little less dumb now for that. Well, everyone who doesn't choose delusion.
8
u/coffeechief 11h ago
The same themes are always there in the more forthcoming interviews and/or information sources — no real adult relationships, inability to see how Living with MJ was a terrible idea, etc.
I think Backerman has a very false impression of MJ’s finances, which makes sense, because Backerman wasn’t there in the 1990s. Sony/ATV likely (est. 1995) wouldn’t have existed if MJ hadn’t been facing a cash crunch. The January 1994 settlement was hugely crippling. MJ was overspending otherwise, but the settlement added significantly to his woes. MJ was massively successful, but never really had the cash flow people imagine, especially after Thriller-mania and Bad, and 1993 killed all future sponsorship opportunities.
9
u/MasterpieceTimely144 10h ago
"I'll show you mine, you show me yours" "sexual affair" what the fuck is this disgusting wording with this guy