Going Public
Michael and Lisa certainly didn’t make many television appearances, but the two that they did agree to do together are memorable. In September 1994, they made their first television appearance as husband and wife on the MTV Awards in New York, in front of two hundred and fifty million television viewers.
Backstage, according to Lisa, Michael announced to her, ‘Now, check it out, girl. I’m going to kiss you when we get out there.’
‘Oh no, you’re not,’ she said.
‘Oh, yes I am,’ he said, smiling. He thought they were bantering, but Lisa wasn’t kidding.
‘No, Michael,’ she said. ‘That’s bullshit. Absolutely not. I don’t want to do it.’
‘Oh, sure you do,’ he remarked. ‘It’ll be great.’
‘I’m telling you, don’t you fucking do that, Michael,’ she warned him. ‘I’m serious.’
About an hour later, they walked on to the stage to thunderous applause, holding hands. Lisa didn’t know when the kiss was going to happen, she would recall, but she knew he was going to do it because ‘by this timeI realized that he does whatever he wants to do.’ She said that, as they walked out from the wings, she was squeezing his hand so hard, ‘I think I cut off the circulation.’
‘Just think, nobody thought this would last,’ Michael told the audience with a grin. He motioned to Lisa. Then, he embraced her and kissed her fully on the lips.
‘It looked awkward becauseI wanted out of my skin,’ Lisa said, years later. ‘I hated it. I felt used, like a prop,’ she said. ‘It was awful.’
‘Afterward, they had a huge fight about it,’ said Monica Pastelle. ‘Her whole thing was, “I told you no, and you just disregarded it.” But Michael thought it was great, a showstopper. He was all about the show, you know? What could they do that would cause headlines? That’s where his head was at. “But people will be talking about that kiss for decades,” he said. “Don’t you see? They’re gonna run that clip over and over.” Lisa was pissed off for days. “Don’t you fucking even come
near
me,” she told him.’
That same week, Michael became annoyed by newspaper reports that suggested that if Elvis Presley were alive, he would not approve of the marriage. ‘I think we need to find out,’ he said. He suggested that he and Lisa have a seance to contact the King. He was serious. He told Lisa he had friends who could communicate with the deceased, and that they could make it possible for him and Lisa to talk to Elvis and ask his opinion of the union. Lisa thought the idea was tasteless. When Michael continued to push it, she lashed out at him. ‘I said no,’ she told him, angrily, ‘and if you stay on this particular road, they’re gonna need a medium to contact
you
in the great beyond, because I’m about to put you there, right now,’ Michael never mentioned the idea, again. ‘Jeez, it was just a suggestion,’ he said, later. ‘Can’t a guy even have a suggestion?’
Nine months later, in June 1995, Michael and Lisa were interviewed on the American television programme
Dateline
by reporter Diane Sawyer.
While it is true that Michael rarely grants television interviews (the last one had been in 1993 with Oprah Winfrey), one would have been hard-pressed to remember any time Lisa had ever been seen answering questions on television. Prior to this highly anticipated broadcast, only frozen images of her came to mind – photographs of a fragile blonde child with a droopy glare and sad, pouting expression reminiscent of her father’s. It was easy to imagine her as a poor little rich girl, victimized by her privileged, heavily scrutinized circumstances. That wasn’t really true of her as an adult, though. After years of therapy through Scientology, she had long ago come to terms with her celebrity. ‘My best trait is that I don’t put on a front for anybody,’ she observed. ‘I’m honest. Scientology has helped me a lot. It teaches you to stay what we call “clean”, to understand your feelings and not hold things in. Yeah, I’ve had a difficult life, in some ways,’ she allowed. ‘But I’ve gotten through it, and have done all right for myself.’
On the night of the television interview, Lisa appeared to the world as a sophisticated, twenty-seven-year-old brunette, gorgeous and, it would seem, anyway, nobody’s victim.
As the Jackson couple sat side by side, they fielded questions from Diane Sawyer about their private life. In talking about the allegations, Michael said, ‘I could never harm a child or anyone. It’s not in my heart. It’s not whoI am and it’s not what I’m even interested in.’ Diane then asked, ‘What do you think should be done to someone who does that?’ Michael responded, ‘To someone who does that? What doI think should be done? Gee, I think they need help in some kind of way, you know?’
He then explained why he decided to settle the Jordie Chandler case. ‘I talked to my lawyers and I said, “Can you guarantee me that justice will prevail?”’ Michael recalled, ‘And they said, “Michael, we cannot guarantee you what a judge or a jury will do.” With that, I was like catatonic. I was outraged, totally outraged. SoI said, “I have got to do something to get out from under this nightmare, all these lies and all these people coming forward to get paid and these tabloid shows, just lies, lies, lies, lies.” So we got together and my advisers advised me. It was hands down, a unanimous decision to resolve the case.’
Throughout his explanation, Diane had continually attempted to interrupt him to ask how much money he had spent on the settlement. Finally, a protective Lisa abruptly cut her off and said, ‘He’s been barred to discuss it.’
Diane asked, ‘The specific terms of the agreement?’
Lisa confirmed, ‘The specific terms,
and
the specific amounts.’
It was going fairly well, until Diane Sawyer asked the loaded question to which no one ever has a good answer: ‘What is a thirty-six-year-old man doing sleeping with a twelve-year-old boy, or a series of them?’ Michael fumbled for a bit, giving his usual monologue about the innocence and purity of such behaviour, until Lisa, looking frustrated, decided to put the matter into perspective.
‘Let me just say,’ she began, ‘that I’ve seen these children. They don’t let him go to the
bathroom
without running in there with him. They won’t let him out of their sight. So when he jumps in the bed, I’m even out [of the bed], you know?
They
jump in the bed with
him
.’ Lisa – mother of two – was on the spot; her credibility was in question just by virtue of the fact that she was sitting there with her husband, on TV, trying to explain why it was okay for him to sleep with children who were not his own. She had to at least give it her best shot.
Unrelenting, Diane followed up, ‘But isn’t part of being an adult and loving children keeping them from ambiguous situations? And again, we’re talking about over an intense period of time here. Would you let your son, when he grows up and is twelve years old, do that?’
Lisa gamely jumped in for more of the impossible. ‘You know what? If I didn’t know Michael, no way,’ she said. ‘But I happen to know who he is and what he is and that makes it, you know…’ Her voice trailed off. ‘I know that he’s not… you know? I know that he’s not like that and I know he has a thing for children…’ Her voice trailed off, again. ‘Sorry…’ she finally said, at a loss.
‘I just wonder, is it over?’ Diane asked, turning to Michael. ‘Are you going to make sure it doesn’t happen again? I think this is really the key thing people want to know.’
‘Is what over?’ Michael asked.
‘Are there not going to be more of these sleepovers in which people have to wonder?’
‘Nobody wonders when kids sleep over at my house,’ he said. ‘Nobody wonders.’
‘But are they over?’
Diane pushed. ‘Are you going to watch out for it?’
‘No,’ he answered. Then, acting as if he didn’t know what she was talking about – or, maybe he really didn’t – he did a double-take and asked, ‘Watch out for what?’
‘Just for the sake of the children and because of everything you’ve been through?’
‘No, because it’s all moral and it’s all pure,’ Michael said, stubbornly. ‘I don’t even think that way. It’s not what’s in my heart.’
‘So you’ll do it again?’ she asked.
‘Do what again?’
‘Have a child sleeping over?’ Diane clarified, now looking annoyed.
‘Of course,’ he answered. ‘If they want. It’s on the level of purity and love and just innocence, complete innocence,’ he concluded. ‘If you’re talking about sex, then that’s a nut. It’s not me. Go to the guy down the street, ’cause it’s not Michael Jackson. It’s not what I’m interested in.’ (A consequence of this interview was that Evan Chandler sued him – again! – claiming that he had breached the terms of the settlement with Jordie. Michael’s lawyers eventually got the suit dismissed.)
It was a shame that Michael couldn’t have conceded to Diane Sawyer that he may have used poor judgement in the past. She was on his side, trying to work with him, and pushing for him to do the mature thing – or at least the responsible thing – and say that he would exercise more caution in the future where youngsters were concerned. There were many ways he could have approached the matter, but being obstinate and haughty was not the best way. ‘I had off-the-record information that there were some ambiguities about the case in Jackson’s favour,’ Diane Sawyer later explained. ‘Still, I have heard people say, after seeing him during that interview, that a parent would be crazy to let their child be alone with him,’
Later, in the interview, when asked whether her marriage to Michael was a sham, Lisa said of such rumours, ‘You know it’s crap. I’m sorry. It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I’m not going to marry somebody for any reason other than the fact that I fall in love with them, period. And they [the public] can
eat
it if they want to think anything different.’
Lisa hoped the couple would be perceived as serious, not silly, during the televised interview. However, Michael’s mugging and clowning – as if he was testing to see how many faces he could get away with before his strict mother would send him to his room – undermined her efforts. She was exasperated, especially when he put his two fingers behind her head as if making devil-horns. However, the interview was emblematic of their relationship: she was the adult, he was the child.
‘What a fucking disaster,’ Lisa said the day after the interview. She was mortified, and angry. ‘I am so pissed off at that Diane Sawyer, the way she pushed and pushed and pushed about our sex life. Jesus, that was terrible. Oh my God. I can’t believe it,’ she said, shaking her head miserably. ‘I can’t even fucking believe that was on TV.’
‘I don’t know, I thought it was pretty cool,’ Michael said, thoughtfully. ‘I mean, we made some good points about the allegations. We made a good-looking couple, too. People loved it, Lisa.’ He reached over and put his arm around her, lovingly. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘it was all right.’ Lisa rolled her eyes.
What originally brought Lisa and Michael together was the drama of molestation allegations and subsequent drug abuse. Her desire to work out a crisis for him was a powerful, motivating force in their relationship. However, once the drama was over, they had little more to fall back on but their surprising physical relationship. ‘It was right after the Diane Sawyer show that things started going bad,’ says Monica Pastelle. ‘Lisa started to wonder if she’d made a mistake in choosing him as a life partner. The great sex continued, though. It was the thing that made it difficult for her to see straight where he was concerned. Whatever was going on in the privacy of their bedroom was enough to keep her hooked into the relationship. However, things were getting strained. When they weren’t in bed making love, they were fighting.’
One adviser recalled, ‘I was in the studio with him as he cut some new music when Lisa walked in. She slumped down next to Michael, looking miserable. They didn’t say one word to each other. He just played with his knobs and dials, ignoring her. Then, after about five minutes of silence, Lisa gave him a long look. She got up. On her way out the door she said, “Nice talkin’ to you, as always.” He ignored her. I said, “Yo! Mike! What’s up? Is everything okay with you two?” He said, “Sure. We’re doing just great. I don’t know why she’s so pissed off at me.” Then, as if hit by a sudden thought, he said, “Wait! Do you think she’s on her… you know… her… you know… her,” and he lowered his voice dramatically, “her
period
?”’