In partnership with Universal Pictures UK
The Michael Jackson story begins in Gary, Indiana, an industrial city that’s home to the largest steel mill complex in North America. The value of the grind was impressed on Michael from a young age by his father, Joe Jackson, a highly ambitious man whose dreams of becoming a professional boxer were supplanted by the need to provide for his family. He and wife Katherine, whom he married in 1949, welcomed 10 children, one of whom died shortly after birth.
Joe earned his crust as a crane operator, but as we see in Michael’s opening scenes, he quickly gleaned that his children’s flair for performing could be a passport to a better life. Played with precision by Colman Domingo, Joe was an exacting taskmaster who formed a polished pop-R&B band featuring five of his sons: Jackie (Nathaniel Logan McIntyre), Tito (Judah Edwards), Jermaine (Jayden Harville), Marlon (Jaylen Lyndon Hunter) and Michael (Juliano Krue Valdi). As The Jackson 5 grew into a bona fide family business, youngest member Michael emerged as its exuberant lead singer.
As Joe put them through their paces on the local gig circuit, Michael’s instinctive sense of rhythm and glorious voice became the centerpiece of The Jackson 5’s joyful stage act. Rising star Juliano Krue Valdi, who makes his movie debut in Michael, was cast as the young Michael because of his own preternatural stage presence. “Juliano is a pure whirlwind of nonstop energy,” says the film’s director Antoine Fuqua. “But he’s the sweetest little guy, and extraordinarily talented. He’s not only a great singer and dancer, but he has a rare ability to tap into raw emotions as an actor. When Juliano walks in a room, he’s like a little man. Michael was that same way at nine.”
Joe expected a lot from his sons, including Michael. But the band’s gruelling rehearsal schedule sometimes concerned the family’s ever-patient matriarch, Katherine, who’s played with great tenderness by Nia Long. Michael’s producer Graham King says that Domingo, a two-time Oscar nominee for Rustin and Sing Sing, relished the opportunity to explore Joe’s “layers” as a parent doubling as a talent manager. The patriarch’s approach paid off in 1968 when The Jackson 5 were signed to Motown, the industry-disrupting label that had minted ‘the sound of young America’ with soulful pop groups like The Supremes and The Temptations. In the film, we see PR exec Suzanne De Passe (Laura Harrier) prepare The Jackson 5 for similar mainstream stardom.
Burnished by the Motown machine, the band’s success was stratospheric. In fact, The Jackson 5 reeled off four consecutive US Number One singles in 1969 and 1970 with the bubblegum soul bangers ‘I Want You Back’, ‘ABC’, ‘The Love You Save’ and ‘I’ll Be There’. In the film’s early performance scenes, Valdi really captures Michael’s scintillating stage presence: all youthful exuberance and nimble rhythm.
“Michael could be very shy about the spotlight, but once he was dancing, he was just like, ‘whew!'” the actor says. The film’s choreographers, Rich and Tone Talauega, were especially impressed with the way that Valdi plugged himself into a different era of performance. “This is a kid of the 2020s, but he was able to instantly soak up vintage dances like the Camel Walk, the James Brown, the Mashed Potato, the Jerk and many more,” Tone says.
Just as Joe had hoped, The Jackson 5’s chart-topping popularity transformed the lives of the entire family. In 1971, they left their humble two-bedroom house in Gary and moved to Hayvenhurst, their much larger home in Encino, California. Both Jermaine and Jackie released solo albums in the early 1970s, but Michael’s solo efforts eclipsed his older brothers. In 1972, he scored a US Number One hit with the winsome ballad ‘Ben’, the title track of his Top Five album of the same name. And on concurrent Jackson 5 smashes like 1971’s wracked ballad ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’, he displayed an uncanny ability to inhabit emotionally complex songs that most teenagers would struggle to carry.
As The Jackson 5 embraced disco and a slight name change – they became The Jacksons when they signed to Epic in 1976 – Michael’s solo star only grew brighter. Along the way, he was also blossoming as a songwriter with an intuitive ability to sculpt and remodel contemporary pop trends. Alongside brother Randy, he co-wrote ‘Shake Your Body (Down To The Ground)’, a juddering disco-funk nugget that became a huge hit for The Jacksons in 1979. But at this point, after a decade of success with the family business, he was ready to take his solo career to another level entirely. His iconic ‘Off The Wall’ era was beckoning.