The first time Arsenio Hall met Michael Jackson, Michael was already in his dressing room. Arsenio was doing stand-up at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. “I’m from the ghetto of Cleveland, so I’m still very nervous,” he said on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in July 2026. As he walked in, he heard a voice from behind his door. Michael had been let in ahead of him. “They let him go in and wait because he’s Michael,” Arsenio said.
He was on the show, with Colman Domingo guest hosting, to talk about his memoir “Arsenio,” which came out on March 31, 2026. Near the end of the interview he got to Michael, and to his own mother.
That night in the dressing room, the two of them talked and swapped phone numbers. After that, Arsenio said, “we talked every now and then.” He told Michael he was bringing his mom out to join him. “I wanted to try to make her quit her job,” he said.
Michael took a real interest. “Michael said, ‘Keep in touch,'” Arsenio remembered. He put it down to Michael’s own mother. “He has a great relationship with Katherine,” Arsenio said, and back then Michael “was still living at home.”
So Michael helped with the move. “He coached me through it all,” Arsenio said. Michael thought she should live in the Valley, close to Hayvenhurst, the Jackson family home. His advice was simple: “Try the Valley… near Hayvenhurst. That’s a good area.”
Arsenio took it. Some time later, Michael was being honored at an award show, and Arsenio was the host. Michael found him with a question: “Did your mother ever move out?” Arsenio told him she was in the Valley now. “Oh, great. Bring her to the show,” Michael said.
Arsenio’s answer came straight back. “No, man, I’m not bringing my mother nowhere with me.” Michael didn’t let it go. “No, you got to bring her.”
Arsenio still didn’t believe a word of it. “I’m thinking this is Hollywood talk because in this town we say things we absolutely don’t mean,” he told the Kimmel audience.
He did it anyway. “So I bring her. I get a limo. I send for her.” In the clip below, listen for the moment Michael asks about his mom, and then hang on for the end of the night.
Arsenio Hall tells his Michael Jackson story on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
This is the official “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” upload. Arsenio starts on Michael at about 16:16, gets to the award show at about 18:34, and tells the end of the night from about 19:42.
By the end of the show, Arsenio had decided Michael didn’t mean it. “I’m thinking Michael was full of it,” he said. “So I’m about to leave.”
He walked his mother out, put her in her limo and sent her down the driveway. Then one of Michael’s security men came over. “Uh, Mr. Jackson, still waiting to meet your mom,” he said. Arsenio couldn’t believe it. “He’s still here?” The answer: “Yeah, he’s in the trailer over here.”
So Arsenio ran.
He chased the limo down the driveway and banged on the back of it. “Mama. Mama,” he called. She rolled down her window. “I said, ‘Michael’s still here waiting. He really wanted to meet you.'”
He took her into Michael’s trailer. “My mother and Michael sat and talked for an hour,” Arsenio said.
She never forgot that hour, and it still turns up in the most ordinary moments. “To this day, you could say, ‘What you having for dinner?'” Arsenio said. “She says, ‘Well, I remember Michael had some soup.'”