Getting into a Michael Jackson video at 17 would be the story of a lifetime for most of us.
One teenage girl from Southern California got about four seconds of screen time. Then she went on to become one of the most famous models in the world.
Her moment comes near the end of “Black or White,” which premiered on Nov. 14, 1991. The video was directed by John Landis. Near the end comes the famous morphing sequence. Face after face, people of all different backgrounds, melt smoothly into one another while Michael’s song plays on.
It looked like magic on TV in 1991. And one of those faces belonged to a 17-year-old who had just forgotten everything she was supposed to do.
Back in 1991, “Primetime Live” looked at how that morphing was done, so you can see what was behind the effect she’s part of.
A 1991 “Primetime Live” look at how the morphing faces were made
She was born on Dec. 4, 1973, in Inglewood, California. She later said that being a local girl was the main reason she got the part in the first place.
Years later, in a 2019 interview with Access Live, she described what happened that day. She had learned the dance. She had met the director, John Landis. And then the music and the lights and the whole set hit her at once. She was so overwhelmed that every step she’d practiced went right out of her head.
So what do you do when the camera is rolling and your mind goes blank?
You improvise.
Yahoo Entertainment put it best in 2016: “She’s onscreen for all of four seconds but manages to stand out since she forgot the choreography and decided to wing it by sticking out her tongue.”
That girl was Tyra Banks.
Yes, that Tyra Banks. A few years later she made history as the first Black woman on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. In 2003 she created the TV show “America’s Next Top Model,” and from 2020 to 2022 she hosted “Dancing with the Stars.”
That’s quite a career for a teenager who blanked on her very first big set.
There’s something sweet about it, too. Long before the magazine covers and the TV shows, she was just a nervous kid on a Michael Jackson set without a clue what came next. So she pulled a face and hoped for the best.
It worked. Out of all those faces, hers is the one with a story attached.
You don’t have to take anyone’s word for it, though. Watch the morphing faces near the end of the official video below and keep your eyes open, because she goes by fast. Look for the young woman with the playful tongue.
The morphing faces in Michael’s “Black or White” video
Did you catch her the first time? If not, scroll back a few seconds and try again. Once you know she’s there, it’s hard to miss that tongue.
She may have forgotten every step she learned that day. But she found a way to make those four seconds count, and she’s been in front of cameras ever since.