Most people met Michael Jackson as the biggest star in the world. His nephew Jaafar Jackson met him as the uncle down the hall.
Jaafar is Jermaine Jackson’s son, which makes Michael his uncle. Now he plays Michael in the new movie “Michael,” the first film made about his uncle’s life. It opened on April 24, 2026 and went on to earn more than a billion dollars around the world, the first biopic ever to do that.
So when a Variety reporter sat down with him for a new interview this week, there was a lot they could have asked about. Instead they asked something simple. Nothing about the dancing or the records. They wanted Jaafar’s very first memory of Michael, not the King of Pop, just the uncle a little boy knew.
His answer had nothing to do with music.
What did he always ask his uncle for, every single time he came around? Candy.
Think about that for a second. Of all the things a boy could remember about Michael Jackson, the first one up is candy. Michael kept candy machines right there in his home movie theater, with stacks of candy piled around them. For a kid walking into that house, it was about the best thing in the world. You didn’t have to ask twice, and you never ran out.
And one kind beat all the others. Starburst. Jaafar even remembers the colors, “pink and red,” which happened to be Michael’s favorites too. Michael used to joke that he was hooked on them, and anyone who has worked their way through a bag of them knows exactly what he meant.
The candy wasn’t the whole story either. Michael always had the newest video games before anyone else could get them. And the two of them played hide-and-seek all through the house. If you’re wondering who usually won, Jaafar made that part easy. Michael “was the best at it.”
Years later, Jaafar sat down to talk about stepping into his uncle’s shoes for the film. Watch him here and you can see how much the man still means to him.
Jaafar Jackson talks about becoming his uncle
It’s a side of Michael almost nobody got to see. The biggest star in the world was, at home, the uncle who hid behind doors so two kids couldn’t find him and kept the candy machines full. Jaafar grew up to play that man on screen in front of millions. But the memory he leads with is smaller and warmer than any of it, a handful of pink and red Starburst from his Uncle Michael.