Radar Online
Janet Jackson does not have the fondest memories of her late brother, Michael.
“There were times when Mike used to tease me and call me names – pig, horse, slut, or hog, cow,” recalls the 55-year-old kid actress-turned-pop icon in her highly-anticipated documentary, Janet, which premieres Friday on A&E and Lifetime.
“He would laugh about it, and I’d laugh too,” she admits. “But then there was somewhere down inside that it would hurt. When you have somebody say you’re too heavy, it affects you.”
Neither Janet nor Michael – who died in 2009 at the age of 50 – had a particularly peachy childhood, but being a female child star who developed at an early age certainly had its effects on Janet.
And Michael’s comments didn’t help.
Years after her brothers had made it big as the singing group, The Jackson 5, an 11-year-old Janet landed the role of Penny” on the 1970s sitcom, Good Times, “and that’s the beginning of having weight issues and the way I looked at myself.”
“I’m an emotional eater, so when I get stressed or something is really bothering me, it comforts me,” says Jackson, who had the added factor of adolescence. “I was developing at a very young age, and I started getting a chest, and they would bind it so I would look more flat-chested.”
Despite her brother’s remarks, Janet believes her weight and body issues stem from fame. Without fame, she says she “probably would have wound up not having a problem.”
Having the Jackson name has been both a blessing and a curse for Janet. On the one hand, it’s helped open doors, but on the other, it’s come with “a great deal of scrutiny.”
“It was frustrating for me,” she recalls of Michael’s various controversies and court battles. “We have our own separate lives, and even though he’s my brother, that has nothing to do with me. But I wanted to be there for him to support him as much as I possibly could.”
Michael’s long list of legal woes began in 1993 when a 13-year-old boy named Jordan Chandler accused the star of having touched him inappropriately. The following year, the two settled out of court for $23 million.
“Michael wound up giving money to the family. He just wanted it to go away, but that looks like you’re guilty,” laments Janet, who says her own career took a hit as a result. “When that came out, Coca-Cola said, ‘No, thank you,’ Guilty by association. That’s what they call it, right?”
In 1995, Michael and Janet joined forces on the former’s song, Scream. The collaboration, says Janet, was far from one.
“It was his song, and I was there to support him,” she explains, but “Michael shot nights, I shot days. His record company would block off his set so I couldn’t see what was going on. They didn’t want me on set. I felt like they were trying to make it very competitive between the two of us.”
“That really hurt me because I felt I was there fighting the fight with him, not to battle him,” she adds. “I wanted it to feel like old times between he and I, and it didn’t. Old times had long passed.”
In fact, Janet believes her relationship with Michael had taken a turn more than a decade prior and believes the pair was never able to fully recover.
It was in 1982 that “it all started to change.”
“I remember really loving the Thriller album, but for the first time in my life, I felt it was different between us. A shift was happening,” she recalls. “That’s the time Mike and I started going our separate ways. He just wasn’t as fun as he used to be.”
Despite the family tension, Janet says she was there for Michael when the addiction started to take over his life. Her efforts, she says, were not well-received.
“My family chartered a private jet, and they came for an intervention. It was a way of us getting close again, and he wasn’t having it,” she claims, adding that she even tried to goat Michael with the idea of a Jackson 5 reunion. “I said, ‘We wanted to talk about you guys going on tour again and if you guys would do that as brothers. I would be honored to open for you.'”
But unfortunately, “he didn’t have much to say” and was “standoffish,” which “really upset” Janet.
