There is a particular kind of heartbreak in a goodbye that neither person knows is a goodbye.
Jaafar Jackson was twelve years old at a family dinner in Beverly Hills, watching his father and his uncle sing together across the table. When it was time to leave, his uncle said five ordinary words to him.
“See you in July.”
Michael Jackson died two months later, on 25 June 2009. July never came.
Jaafar described that evening for the first time in a recent interview with GQ Middle East, while promoting the biopic in which he plays the man who said those words to him. The occasion was a family gathering to celebrate the wedding anniversary of Joe and Katherine Jackson, Michael’s parents. It was around April 2009, and Michael was deep in preparation for the This Is It concerts in London.
Jaafar Jackson: Childhood Memories with his Uncle Michael
What Jaafar remembers is not a speech or a grand moment. It is something much smaller and much better. His father Jermaine — Michael’s brother, a Jackson 5 member — sat with Michael, and the two of them started singing a cappella together, just two brothers with no music, at a family dinner.
And Jaafar sat opposite them and watched. His description of it is beautifully understated: “I remember just sitting across from him and my dad, they were singing a cappella together. I was just observing, it was special.”
Michael spent part of that evening talking about inviting the whole family out to London for the summer shows. That is what “see you in July” meant. He was not saying goodbye. He was making a plan.
Michael Jackson’s Private Journals: What Jaafar Jackson Learned That Surprised Him About His Uncle
The rest of Jaafar’s memories of his uncle are what you would want them to be. He has described Michael coming over to the family home at Hayvenhurst for family game days. He remembers Neverland — playing hide and seek, going on the rides, watching films, and, in his words, “eating as much candy” as he could manage. His summary of all of it is three words long: “It was all fun.”
Then in 2020, a producer approached him about a film. Jaafar had never acted in his life. He sent back a voice note of himself speaking as Michael, and spent the next several years — including two full years of auditioning while a worldwide casting search ran alongside him — earning the part.
Jaafar is not playing a myth or a photograph. He is playing a man he ate dinner with. He is stepping into the memory of somebody who once told him he would see him in July.
The film opened in April 2026 and has surpassed $1 billion. His grandmother Katherine, who is 95 and who raised Michael, watched it and told him there were moments when she could not tell which of them she was looking at.
Jaafar’s response to that says everything. “To me, that’s all I needed to hear.”