In the fall of 2010, Oprah Winfrey sat down in the garden of the Jackson family home in Encino, California. Michael’s mother, Katherine, was raising his three children there, and all three joined the conversation. Prince was 13, Paris was 12 and Blanket (who now goes by Bigi) was 8. The interview aired on Monday, Nov. 8, 2010, 16 years ago this Sunday.
For most of their lives the kids had been a mystery. When they went out in public, their dad often covered their faces with veils. Paris told Oprah the veils weren’t always comfortable, but she understood why he did it. They meant that “when we went out without our dad nobody would really recognize us,” she said, as the Associated Press reported in 2010. He was trying to protect them, and she knew it.
Now the cameras were on them, and Paris wanted to set one thing straight. “I think no one understands what a good father he was,” she told Oprah (AP, 2010).
Then she got specific. Of all the things she could have said about the King of Pop, she picked his cooking. “I’d say he was the best cook ever,” she said, according to Essence. “He was just a normal dad, except he was the best dad.”
The kids had their own dreams to share too. Prince talked about wanting to produce and direct movies, and Paris said she wanted to act, as Newser and the AP reported that week. Bigi, the AP noted, was the shy one.
But it’s Paris’s cooking review that fans remember, because she didn’t stop at “best cook ever.” She had a favorite dish, and she named it.
It was French toast. “He made the best French toast in the world,” Paris told Oprah, as Essence reported in 2010. In the first video below, she starts that line at about 3:01, right after calling him the best cook ever.
It’s a funny thing to hear about the man who moonwalked across the Motown 25 stage in one sequined glove. Millions knew him from the stage. His daughter judged him at the breakfast table, and she gave him the top score in the world.
Paris went on to act and sing, just as she told Oprah she wanted to. Bigi has kept mostly out of the spotlight. And the tape from that garden in Encino still has a 12-year-old telling Oprah Winfrey that her dad’s French toast beat everyone’s.
Paris tells Oprah about her dad’s cooking in the 2010 interview
This fan upload has the original English audio with Spanish subtitles. Paris explains the veils at about 0:13, calls her dad “the best cook ever” at 2:28 and names the French toast at 3:01.
The 2010 preview: a Las Vegas roof, city lights and “the best dad”
This 48-second fan upload of the show’s preview opens with early-morning walks on the beach at 0:07, then moves to a Las Vegas roof, the city lights and Snickers at 0:15. Paris’s “best cook ever” and “best dad” lines run from 0:23 to 0:31.