Todd Bridges was standing behind the Jackson family home in Encino the first time he saw Michael Jackson. He didn’t get a handshake or a hello. He got a car coming in fast.
Bridges is Willis from “Diff’rent Strokes,” the big brother on the other end of “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” He knew the Jackson family through Janet, and that’s how he came to be at Hayvenhurst, the family estate, on the day this story happened.
He told it on “The Patrick LabyorSheaux,” the podcast hosted by actor Patrick Labyorteaux, and the show posted the clip to its YouTube channel on August 5, 2025. “I remember my first time I went and met Michael,” Bridges says. “It was crazy. I went to the Hayvenhurst house that was being rebuilt because they were staying in condos down the street.”
So the house was a building site. The family had moved out while the work went on, and Bridges had wandered around the back to look at what was there. That’s where he was when Michael turned up.
“Michael’s driving in and power slides around the car and he jumps out, starts singing,” Bridges says.
It was some entrance. One of the most famous singers in America had slid his car to a stop, climbed out and started to sing, right there on the driveway. Bridges was a TV star himself by then, and he still had no idea what he was looking at. “And I’m like, what is he doing?” he says.
Todd Bridges tells the story of the day he met Michael Jackson
This is the podcast’s own upload, and it runs a minute and a half. Bridges tells the driveway story from the first second to about 0:40. From there to about 1:20, he and Labyorteaux talk about what Michael was like away from the stage.
His question got an answer on the spot, and the answer is the best part of the story. “He’s like, oh, he’s singing his new album,” Bridges says. “Like, oh, okay.”
Bridges says that album was “Thriller.” Labyorteaux stops to place the moment for his listeners. “Michael Jackson, biggest star in the world at this time,” he says. “He just come out with Off the Wall. Thriller hadn’t come out yet.”
“Thriller” reached record stores on November 30, 1982, and it went on to outsell every album before it. By the host’s timeline, Bridges heard some of it early, behind a half-built house, from a man who had just jumped out of a car.
The ride came next, and Bridges remembers it less fondly. “Went driving with Michael,” he says. “And I’m going tell you something. Driving with Michael scary.”
He doesn’t dress it up. He says he was scared for the whole ride, and a few seconds later he comes back to it: “I was so afraid driving with Michael, man, because he drove.”
The rest of the clip is gentler. The talk turns to what Michael was like in private, and Bridges describes someone who changed when he walked off a stage. “When he was on stage he’s different,” he says, “but in real life he’s, you know, he’s just a normal person.” Michael had the same conversations as anybody else, Bridges says, and “his likes, his dislikes.”
Bridges grew up on TV sets, so his last word on Michael carries some weight. “He was probably the most talented person I ever met in my life,” he says. “Him and Prince. Those two were amazing.”