Paris Jackson is Michael’s only daughter, born in 1998. She grew up as the King of Pop’s little girl, and she was 22 when she sat down to talk about it with someone who’d known her father too.
That someone was Naomi Campbell, the supermodel. In March 2021, Paris joined her for Naomi’s YouTube series “No Filter,” and the episode went up on March 30.
Naomi had her own history with Michael. Back in 1992, she danced with Michael in his “In the Closet” video, directed by the photographer Herb Ritts. It premiered on April 23 that year, and if you haven’t seen it in a while, here’s Naomi with Michael almost three decades before that chat with his daughter.
Naomi Campbell and Michael Jackson in “In the Closet”
So when Paris talked about her childhood, she was talking to someone who’d seen her dad at work.
She started with where she grew up, and the answer was everywhere. Paris was born in Los Angeles, but she told Naomi, “I was raised kind of everywhere, like the east coast, the south, U.K., Europe, the Middle East”
For a lot of famous families, a life like that would mean the best hotel in every city and not much else.
Michael could easily have given his kids only that. Paris says he wanted more for them.
“My dad was really good about making sure we were cultured, making sure we were educated,” she said. That meant “not just showing us like the glitz and glam, like hotel hopping, five-star places.”
Then she explained what he showed them instead.
“It was also like, we saw everything. We saw third-world countries. We saw every part of the spectrum.”
That’s a big thing for a parent to decide. Michael could have kept his three children in the nicest suites in the world and never let them see how other people lived. Instead, he took them to poorer countries too, and he wanted them to understand all of it, the comfortable side of life and the hard side.
Paris tells it best in her own words, so here’s the full conversation with Naomi, where she shares these memories of her dad.
Paris Jackson’s sit-down with Naomi Campbell
There’s a second sweet memory in that same talk, and it’s about what filled the house when they got home from all that traveling.
Music, of course. But maybe not the kind you’d guess.
“He loved classical music and jazz,” Paris said. And that was only the start. She added that her dad also loved hip-hop, R&B, Motown, Top 40 and soft rock. In the Jackson house, the radio could land almost anywhere.
It fits with the picture she gave of him as a father. A man who wanted his kids to see every side of the world also wanted them to hear every kind of music.
Paris has talked about her dad in other places too. In a separate interview with The Evening Standard magazine, she kept it short and simple when she described him.
“He was very humble.”