Jason Weaver was on a break between scenes when an assistant director pulled him aside. “Hey Jason, come to this trailer, somebody wants to meet you,” he remembers being told.
He walked over and found a man he took for an older white guy, “kind of just sitting there.” Jason had no idea who he was.
The kid from Chicago who played Michael
Jason grew up in Chicago and was 13 when ABC aired “The Jacksons: An American Dream” in two parts, starting on Nov. 15, 1992. That’s 34 years ago this Sunday.
Landing the role meant getting past the Jacksons themselves. “They gave their final approval before the tape was sent to Michael,” Jason said of the family in his 2019 interview with VladTV, as quoted by Cheatsheet.
So the family had signed off on the boy. Michael just hadn’t met him yet.
The day the set lost its cool
Jason told VladTV’s DJ Vlad that one day an announcement went out that Michael was coming to visit.
“I mean, the set went into a frenzy,” he said. “I’m talking about crew members, these are professionals in Hollywood, have worked with everybody.” Security was running around. Everyone waited.
Michael didn’t come that day. “I guess it got back to him,” Jason said, “that, you know, a disruption had occurred when it was announced that he would possibly be coming.”
Some time later came that break, and the walk to the trailer.
So who was it?
It was Michael. He had come in disguise, with a fake beard and clothes to match. “He definitely looked like an older white guy,” Jason said. “I mean, even the clothes that he had on.”
Jason only figured it out when the man started talking. “When I looked at his eyes, he was like, ‘Man, you’re doing a great job, doing a really good job, Jason.'”
Jason blurted out the name. “Michael!”
“Hey, how you doing?” Michael answered. “I’m sorry I had to come like this.”
If Jason is right that word of the first commotion got back to Michael, the beard makes sense. He came back quietly, dressed so nobody would look twice and nothing on set would stop, and what he wanted to tell the kid playing him was that he was doing a great job.
Jason tells it best himself, and the whole trailer moment is in the first two minutes of this clip. Listen for what he says happened when he looked at the man’s eyes.
Jason Weaver tells VladTV about the visitor in the trailer
This is VladTV’s interview, from its own YouTube channel: Jason tells the trailer story from 0:04 to about 2:20, and Michael’s words to him start at around 0:50. The rest of the clip has bleeped language and moves on to other topics, so stop at 2:20.
Why the beard
DJ Vlad brought up Rick Baker, the makeup artist behind “Thriller.” Jason said Michael would use special effects makeup “when he wanted to feel normal, like a normal human being,” to walk around “without anyone noticing.” That day it meant a film crew kept working, and a boy from Chicago got his visit.
Jason never forgot it. Near the end of the interview, he said he was thankful he got the chance, “even if it was in that little amount of time,” to say thank you, “because that really meant a lot to me.” Then he added, “I’m eternally grateful to Michael and his family.”