Word went around the set of The Goonies that Michael Jackson was coming. Nobody could say when.
“I remember when we were told that Michael Jackson was going to visit,” Ke Huy Quan told The Guardian in February 2025. “The cast and crew were so excited. We didn’t know what time he was arriving, so we were constantly looking over our shoulder.”
Ke was one of the kids in the film. He played Data, the Goonie with a gadget for every problem, not long after he’d played Short Round next to Harrison Ford in the second Indiana Jones film. Steven Spielberg produced The Goonies, and Richard Donner directed it.
The moment Michael walked in
When Michael finally showed up, the whole set stopped. “Sure enough, when he walked on to the set, everybody just stopped what they were doing,” Ke said. That meant everyone, “even the guy making the coffee.”
The biggest star in the world didn’t act like one. “He was very shy,” Ke recalled. “I think we made him nervous because there were so many people.”
Ke goes back to that day in his new memoir, which came out in September 2026. “Seeing this Michael Jackson in person was something else entirely,” he writes, in passages Entertainment Weekly published. He remembers that when Michael “stepped farther into the caves” of the set, “he looked around almost shyly, taking everything in.” What stayed with him was “the way he seemed just as curious about our world as we were about his.” In his words, “For a few minutes, it honestly felt like Michael Jackson had become an honorary Goonie.”
Photos, then a surprise
The kids got their pictures with him. “Then we took those photos that you see on the internet,” Ke told The Guardian. “We were so giddy that he was there.”
Michael didn’t stop at photos, though. Before he left, he had something for the young cast, and it’s the part of the story Ke still can’t let go of. So what did Michael give them?
Concert tickets and a jacket each
He gave them two things. “He gave us tickets to watch him perform in Los Angeles, and gave us all a jacket, which some of us still have,” Ke said.
Ke isn’t one of the lucky ones. “Somehow I lost mine, which I’m very mad at myself for,” he told The Guardian.
He didn’t say which concert the tickets were for, or what the jackets looked like. He did say that some of his castmates held on to theirs.
Where this story comes from
The quotes about the visit, the tickets and the jacket come from Ke’s interview with The Guardian, published in February 2025 and reported by Variety. The “honorary Goonie” lines come from his new memoir, as quoted by Entertainment Weekly in September 2026. We couldn’t find a video of Ke telling the Michael story on camera, so we haven’t promised you one here.
He has talked about making the film on his book tour this fall, though.
Ke Huy Quan talks about making The Goonies on Jimmy Kimmel Live
This is the official Jimmy Kimmel Live upload from the book tour. Ke talks about filming The Goonies and about his new memoir, but the Michael visit isn’t part of this clip.
The Goonies reached theaters in 1985. Four decades on, a few of its young stars still have a jacket that came from Michael Jackson himself. Ke’s went missing somewhere along the way, and he’s still annoyed with himself about it.