Every grandmother knows the sound of a grandchild who wants something badly.
Katherine Jackson heard it from Paris.
Katherine is Michael Jackson’s mother, the woman who raised Michael and his brothers and sisters. In 2012, Michael’s three children, Prince, Paris and Blanket, who now goes by Bigi, were living with their grandmother. That May, Katherine sat down with Piers Morgan for CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight.” The interview aired on Monday, May 14, the day after Mother’s Day. CNN ran it again on May 19.
She talked about the kids the way any proud grandma would.
Paris was 14 then, and she had her heart set on something. She kept coming back to Katherine and asking, over and over. Katherine didn’t say where these talks happened, but anyone who’s raised a teenager can fill in the scene. Maybe it came up over breakfast and then again before bed. Katherine remembered her exact words: “please, grandma, I want this.”
What Paris wanted was to act.
Katherine wasn’t sure at first. So Paris decided to show her she was serious, and she did it right then and there.
She told her grandmother, “I can cry on cue.”
And then she did it.
Piers Morgan pointed out that crying on cue is not easy. Paris pulled it off in front of the toughest audience she had, her grandma.
It worked. Katherine said yes and signed Paris up for acting lessons.
You have to love the logic of it. Paris didn’t argue or make a speech. She just showed her grandmother the one skill she figured an actress needed most.
But Katherine was honest about how she felt. She told Piers she was pleased and a little worried at the same time. She didn’t think Michael would have wanted Paris out in the spotlight so soon. She said yes anyway, because her granddaughter wanted it that much.
That’s the kind of thing a lot of grandparents will understand. You want to protect them, and you also want to see them happy.
Katherine had good news about the other kids, too. On Prince and school, she couldn’t hide her pride. “His grades are so good. They’re A-pluses.”
And on all three of them together: “They’re getting along very well.”
A few months before that interview, in January 2012, the family was in Hollywood for a ceremony at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre honoring Michael, and this clip from that day takes you back to the same months Katherine was talking about.
The 2012 ceremony for Michael at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre
Katherine shared one more small memory in that interview, this time about Michael as a little boy. “He loved even the crayons,” she said.
It’s a sweet line to read right after Paris’s story. Katherine had watched her own son fall in love with making things as a boy, and now his daughter was standing in front of her asking for a creative dream of her own.
So the next time a grandchild of yours asks for something with that look on their face, you might want to wait and see what they’re about to show you.