Prince Jackson is sharing a chilling childhood memory about his late, famous father, Michael Jackson, and it’s one that left him and his siblings genuinely frightened.
The 29-year-old recalled watching the King of Pop’s iconic “Thriller” music video as kids and believing every second of it.
“Terrified,” Prince revealed of their reaction at the time during a recent appearance on Australia’s Sunrise program on Channel Seven, according to the Daily Mail.
In the iconic 1982 video, his dad famously turns into a werewolf and a zombie before dancing with the undead.
“He told us that it was real,” Prince added, “like it wasn’t special effects or anything like that.”
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Moments like that, Prince suggested, were part of his father’s playful personality. “He just had a very childlike nature that was so much fun, always playing pranks on people and stuff,” Prince added.
Prince, who served as a producer on the biopic Michael, reflected on growing up at his father’s famed Neverland ranch, which doubled as an amusement park.
“As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that a lot of what I think is normal life is not normal life,” he said, per the outlet.
Still, he described his childhood as both magical and grounded, even amid the ranch’s more surreal elements.
“Growing up at Neverland with my siblings and my father, for us, it was hanging out together as a family, but with the backdrop of elephants and giraffes walking in the background,” he explained. “We spent a lot of time playing board games together, reading books, watching movies. It truly was, and is, magical. It felt like your own personal Disneyland.”
Prince didn’t hold back when describing his father, calling him an “awesome” dad.
“I would love to have kids and, you know, take notes on what he did as a father, but he was always on our level in a way,” he added. “When he played with us, he played with us. You know, he got down, and he was playing with the toys and making up stories.”
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Despite growing up with intense security as the child of a global superstar, Prince said efforts were made to ensure he still had a sense of normalcy.
“I also see a lot of effort that was put to kind of mitigate that isolation,” he said. “I grew up in a big family, and so I have 40-plus cousins, and I see them as my siblings and my friends. And so I never felt lonely. But definitely a unique way to grow up.”
Michael Jackson died in 2009, leaving behind three children, including Prince and daughter Paris Jackson, 28, with ex-wife Debbie Rowe. His youngest son, Bigi Jackson, now 24, was born via an anonymous surrogate.
The new musical biographical film Michael, which premiered in Los Angeles on April 20, stars his nephew Jaafar Jackson in the lead role. The movie’s timeline ends in 1988 and reportedly does not touch on the allegations of sexual abuse that Michael faced — and repeatedly denied — before his death.
This story Michael Jackson’s Son Prince Says Late Singer Told Him ‘Thriller’ Was ‘Real,’ Recalls Being ‘Terrified’ first appeared on InTouch Weekly. Add InTouch Weekly as a Preferred Source by clicking here.