Jaafar Jackson is Michael Jackson’s nephew, and he plays his famous uncle in the new movie “Michael.” Before any of this, Jaafar had barely danced on a stage in his life. He had to learn to move like the best dancer pop music ever had, and he had to do it with the cameras rolling.
That part did not come easy.
The man who put the movie together is Graham King, a producer known for big films about musicians. Last Saturday, on Oct 17, King sat on a panel at the Directors Guild in Los Angeles and told a room full of people a story he had mostly kept quiet. About a month into rehearsals, his choreographers called him. They were honest with him. “We’re not sure we can get him there,” they said.
That’s a hard thing to hear about the lead of your movie, with the whole production counting on him.
King said he was let down. He sat down with Jaafar to talk it through. Jaafar didn’t argue and he didn’t make excuses. He asked for one thing. “Give me some time,” he said.
So King gave him time. And then he waited.
Then one night, out of nowhere, Jaafar called him and asked him to come over and watch. On his own, away from the room full of coaches, Jaafar had kept grinding. When King saw him move, he could barely believe it was the same young man. “He had transformed himself on his own,” King told the panel. “It was incredible.”
The crowd at the Q&A gave Jaafar a standing ovation when he walked out.
There’s a little more to it. His very first day on set wasn’t some gentle warm-up scene either. They threw him straight into one of Michael’s most demanding numbers, the full “Bad” performance. Most actors get eased in slow. He got the deep end on day one.
Jaafar has talked about how strange and emotional it felt to turn into his uncle, from the makeup chair all the way to the dance floor. He went on Jimmy Fallon’s show and walked through what those early days were really like, and you can hear how much it meant to him.
Jaafar Jackson on becoming Michael and filming the big dance numbers
You can see the dancing that worried everybody in the film’s first trailer. Watch the way he carries himself, the spins, the sharp snap of the moves. It’s the uncle a lot of us grew up watching.
The first trailer for “Michael,” with Jaafar’s dancing
King has told plenty of stories about making this film, but this is the one he keeps circling back to. A young man was told he might not be ready, and instead of folding he went off and figured it out himself. The movie reaches theaters soon, so before long everyone will get to judge the dancing for themselves.