14 DAY TRIAL // Janet Jackson has lived most of her adult life away from the spotlight, except, of course, when she had an album to promote. It’s no wonder then that she has kept her silence ever since her brother Michael passed away in June this year, refusing to talk to the media altogether. The latest Harper’s Bazaar issue comes to put an end to said silence, as Janet is featured in the magazine, opening up for the first time about Michael’s death.
“I’ve been doing okay. Work helps focus all of that energy on something that is of value to you.” Janet, perhaps the one Jackson who almost loathes to talk, so, when she does, every word comes out almost like a whisper, says. While the world continues to mourn for Michael Jackson the icon, the King of Pop, Janet is still struggling with the grief of having lost a family member, an elder brother who’s always been very protective of her and of whom she remembers he liked to laugh more than anything else.
In fact, if Janet were to tell the world just one thing about Michael, that is that he liked to laugh a lot. “He loved to laugh. The last time we were together, he’d laugh so hard, he would just start crying. Sometimes his humor would be corny, sometimes dry. He loved the Three Stooges, he loved slapstick, he loved Eddie Murphy in his silly comedies. He loved to have fun. He loved to play… He’s just got so much love, and so much heart, and so much power through his music. Children and his love for children. People have told me, ‘I am an American citizen because of your brother.’” Janet says for Harper’s Bazaar.
The media frenzy surrounding Michael’s sudden death proved too much for Janet to stand. She doesn’t like media attention either way and does her best to avoid it, she says, but, in recent months, she’s come to learn what it’s like to be completely torn from the rest of the world, isolated as she was on an island of personal, family grief. She hasn’t watched TV or the news and hasn’t read a newspaper since June, the singer admits. She also doesn’t like people speculating on who may have or not killed Michael, or on who will get his impressive estate, because she feels they’re violating the memory she has of someone who was, before “the ultimate entertainer,” a human being, a brother.
She does, however, have a word to say about the much-mediated impromptu speech Paris Jackson, Michael’s only daughter, gave at her father’s public memorial. “I was really proud. People said to me that Michael’s daughter speaking really gave them a sense of how he was as a father, in her words. Paris is incredibly smart; they are all so smart. She’s a sweet girl. The kids are doing well. They’re with all their cousins; that family love will keep them going.” Janet explains.
For the full interview with Harper’s Bazaar, please see here.
