Naomi Campbell was walking off the runway at a Gianni Versace show in Milan when Herb Ritts got her on the phone. The famous photographer was about to direct Michael Jackson’s “In the Closet” video, and he had news for her. Michael Jackson was going to call.
Versace heard about it too. Naomi says the designer was “more excited for the phone call than I was.”
She tells the whole story in a short video on her own YouTube channel, and it starts years before that day. “I was one of those 10 year-olds, 11… that saved up my pocket money to buy Off the Wall,” she says. She still remembers the album that folded out “with Michael against the wall in the tuxedo.” Then she adds, “I would never believe in a million years I would be meeting him, knowing him.”
Now the man on that fold-out cover wanted her in his next video. The song was “In the Closet,” from the “Dangerous” album. Ritts shot the video in late February and early March 1992 in the California desert, near the Salton Sea. It premiered on April 23, 1992, with Naomi as the woman dancing opposite Michael.
There was a problem, though. When Michael got on the line, she gave him a straight answer.
“I remember saying I’ve got 20-something shows to do and it would be irresponsible for me to cancel my fashion show, so I cannot do your video,” Naomi says.
Shows were her job, and she wasn’t going to walk out on them, even for the King of Pop. So how did she end up in the desert anyway? Listen for Michael’s reply right after her “no,” at about 1:44.
Naomi Campbell tells how Michael Jackson asked her to be in “In the Closet”
This is Naomi’s own official channel. She gets to Herb’s call in Milan at about 1:27 and to the last day of the shoot at about 4:03, with old footage of Cindy Crawford on location in the desert with Michael and Herb Ritts at about 0:38.
So what did Michael say?
He had an offer ready, and it took care of every one of those shows. “Then came the reply: I’m gonna pay for all those shows that you’re gonna miss,” Naomi remembers.
Even then she didn’t say yes on the spot. “I don’t know, I have to speak to my agent,” she told him. “In the end I flew to LA to do the video,” she says.
She told the same story on Lil Wayne’s “Young Money Radio” in 2020. In that telling, as reported by Showbiz Cheat Sheet, Michael said, “Well, I’ll pay out the shows so you can come and do the video.” That version puts her bookings at about 30 shows in Paris.
Once she got there, the girl with the pocket-money record met the real Michael. “Michael was amazing,” she says, “a child yes at certain points, but a man that knew, a perfectionist of what he was doing, how he wanted it to come out, how he wanted it to look.” She also calls him “a very sweet soul.”
“We were like kids,” Naomi says. “He was everything I thought he would be, or even more.”
She means the kids part. “Michael was a prankster,” she explains, “so then it became like I’m gonna out-prank him.” The two of them got into a contest over “who’s gonna get the most water guns.”
The water-gun contest ran all the way to the end. “When it came down to the last day and we wrapped, it was like in camouflage outfits, like we’re ready for war,” Naomi says, and she tells that part at about 4:03 in her video.
So on the final day of a Herb Ritts shoot in the California desert, Naomi Campbell and Michael Jackson wrapped “In the Closet” in camouflage outfits.