When the new movie about Michael Jackson needed a boy to play the King of Pop as a child, the part went to Juliano Valdi. He was born in 2014, which makes him 12, and “Michael” is his first live-action film. It was a huge job for a kid. He had to play one of the most famous kids who ever lived, back in the Jackson 5 years when Michael was small and already singing lead with his brothers.
That’s a lot to put on a child.
Juliano has talked about what the whole thing felt like, and the part people keep repeating isn’t about the dancing or the singing. It’s about a face he saw on set one day.
The Jackson family came by to watch the production. Among them was Katherine Jackson, Michael’s mother. She raised Michael and his brothers and sisters, and she’s now in her 90s. For a boy pretending to be her son, having her right there was a big moment.
Here’s a look behind the scenes of the film, with the grown-up cast and crew on the same set Juliano worked on.
Inside the making of the Michael Jackson movie
In his interview, Juliano went back to that first day. “I remember the first day I saw the Jackson family,” he said. Then came the thought he still talks about. “I remember seeing Katherine, and when I saw her I wanted to make her proud.”
Sit with that for a second, coming from a 12-year-old. He wasn’t thinking about his own big break or the cameras. He was thinking about an older woman watching someone play her little boy, and he didn’t want to let her down.
Juliano knew the whole family was counting on him too. He could feel how much they believed in him. “I knew that when they thought so highly about me, they were really confident in me,” he said. “I had to make everyone proud because they thought that I could play Michael Jackson.”
Then he said the thing nobody expects from a kid. Asked what carrying that responsibility felt like, Juliano compared it to something small and fragile. He said he had to handle the role “like taking care of a baby, basically, being so gentle with it.”
A 12-year-old talking about being gentle and careful, the way you’d cradle something that could break. Most grown actors never put it that well.
Jaafar Jackson, Michael’s nephew and the son of his brother Jermaine, plays the grown-up Michael in the film. He’s the one most of the attention goes to. But it’s the youngest member of the cast who gave the memory that sticks.
Watch the clip to see the set Juliano walked onto and the family he stepped in front of.