Bryton James picked his hero early. “Right before around two years old I discovered Michael Jackson and then I thought I was Michael,” he told Maurice Benard on Benard’s show “State of Mind” in December 2021. “If someone would talk to me for long enough, I would start singing and dancing.”
Today he’s Devon on “The Young and the Restless.” Back then he was Bryton McClure, the little boy who played Richie Crawford on “Family Matters.” And he had a plan.
A woman named Shana started working on “Family Matters” when he was “about five, six years old,” Bryton said. She also worked as a receptionist at MJJ Productions, Michael’s production company. “I wrote a letter to him and she was able to get it to him,” he said. “He wrote a letter back.”
About a year later the boy got to meet the man he’d written to. On Jan. 16, 1993, at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, the 25th NAACP Image Awards named Michael Entertainer of the Year. Bryton and Raven-Symoné, little Olivia from “The Cosby Show,” were the two kids asked to present it to him.
“My father and I got to go backstage afterwards,” Bryton said. There he met a couple of Michael’s cousins his own age. “Still friends to this day, they’re like my brothers.” Then Michael invited the whole family to his Neverland ranch. “And we did,” Bryton said. In the clip below, watch for the moment the two small kids stand beside Michael on stage.
Raven-Symoné and Bryton McClure onstage with Michael at the 1993 NAACP Image Awards
This is a fan upload of the TV broadcast, so the picture is soft. At about 1:10 you can see the two kids on stage next to Michael, in his black jacket, while a host speaks at the microphone.
That first visit to the ranch wasn’t the last. “I spent almost every birthday at Neverland,” Bryton told Soap Opera Digest in 2018. He remembered a full movie theater “with candy, popcorn and an ice cream machine.”
Michael stayed in touch for years. Bryton was a working child actor in Hollywood, and the biggest star in the world kept making time for him.
So why did Michael care so much?
Bryton says he knows the answer. “From that time on he would just stay in contact with me,” he told Benard, “and I know his goal was to make sure that I was having a good time and having fun being a child in the entertainment industry, because he didn’t.”
Michael had been singing on stages since he was a little boy in Gary, Indiana. His own childhood went to rehearsals, recording studios and tour buses. He wanted this kid to get the fun part too.
He passed along some music lessons as well. “I learned from Michael that if you really want to reach people with music, you have to study it all, from classical to country to rap,” Bryton told Soap Opera Digest. And when you sing, Michael told him, “imagine opening your arms and trying to hug as many people as possible.” In the interview below, listen for how Bryton sums up what Michael wanted for him.
Bryton James tells the story on “State of Mind” with Maurice Benard
Bryton starts at about 9:47 with the letter, the award and the ranch. At about 11:31 he remembers a cab ride with Michael in London.
That cab ride stayed with him. Michael’s car couldn’t make it to the venue, so Bryton rode with him in a cab with “no tinted windows.” People eating on the sidewalks and walking down the street saw who was inside. “Their life stops and then they start running after the car,” Bryton said, “and that’s his life everywhere he goes.”
The two cousins he met backstage that night in Pasadena are still his friends more than 30 years later. Bryton calls them his brothers.