How Come Nobody Ever Apologizes to Michael Jackson: Macaulay Culkin

On last week’s edition of How Come Nobody Ever Apologizes to Michael Jackson, we covered the relationship between Michael Jackson and Marlon Brando. This week, we’ll be diving into the friendship between Jackson and Macaulay Culkin, which began in the early 1990s, and lasted until Jackson’s death in 2009. Despite the attempts from the media and Jackson’s detractors to twist their relationship into something “weird” or “sinister,” as they have tried to do with just about all of the relationships in his life, Culkin remains one of Jackson’s biggest defenders (even in death), and is even the godfather to his children. Separately, in 2005, Culkin also testified on Jackson’s behalf at his criminal trial.

As I’ve done this entire series thus far, I am going to let Culkin tell the story of his friendship with Jackson in his own words.

Culkin on Jackson

Prior to defending Jackson on the stand in 2005, Culkin sat down for an extensive interview with Larry King (which you can watch here), in which he defended his friend. Culkin told King:

“He’s a good friend of mine. What’s going on is an unfortunate situation for everyone involved. I first really met him when he called me randomly out of the blue. This was during Home Alone…I actually had previously met him when I was doing Nutcracker. I didn’t react to him the way most people did—he was a God to most people. To me, I knew he was a pop singer, but I wasn’t one of the fans, and I think that is one of the reasons why we connected. We were all (the Culkin family) friends with him.”

King then goes on to ask Culkin about “what happened at the house,” (meaning Neverland) to which he responded:

“You know, that’s what is so weird…we played video games and he had an amusement park. The thing is…they go ‘oh they slept in the same bedroom as him,’ and I don’t think they understand that Michael Jackson’s bedroom is two stories, and it has three bathrooms. So yeah, I slept in his bedroom, but you have to understand the whole scenario of that.”

Just as a reminder, this is what Jackson’s bedroom at Neverland looked like unfurnished and furnished from my article about the layout of Neverland (you can see the stairs to the upper level in the first pic):

Back to Culkin, he continued telling King:

“The thing with Michael is that he’s not very good at explaining himself, and he never really has been because he is not a very social person. You’re talking about someone who’s been sheltered and sheltering himself for the last 30 years. He is not very good at communicating and conveying what he has to say at times.”

King proceeds to asks why Jackson liked having friendships with younger people in general, to which Culkin responded:

“Because like with me, they didn’t care who he was. I talked to him like he was a normal human being, and kids do that to him because yeah he’s Michael Jackson the pop singer, but he is just a guy who is very kid-like himself. He wants to play video games and stuff like that.”

Finally, King asks Culkin about what he makes of the 2003 allegations. He answers:

“It’s like I said before, it’s very unfortunate. Look what happened the first time. If somebody had done something like that to my kid, I wouldn’t just settle for some money, I would make sure the guy was in jail. It just really goes to show…they got the money and they ran. It’s a little crazy, and I’m kind of taking a step back from the whole thing because it’s a circus. If the same thing was happening to me, I wouldn’t want to drag him into it and vice versa, so I keep a distance from it, but he is still my friend.”

Despite Culkin originally saying he wouldn’t want to be involved should he be called as a character witness to the case because of the media chaos, he indeed did end up defending Jackson during the trial.

Here are some more quotes from and about Culkin and Jackson courtesy of MJ Story who pulled them years ago.

“Michael is one of the most important people in my life. He was my best friend. We were strongly connected because he knew what I was going through. Stress, abuse, and an oppressive family. He was always present and understanding.”

From Jackson’s attorney Tom Mesereau:

“I have to say, Chris Tucker and Macaulay Culkin will always go down in my book as loyal, good friends. They had managers and agents, and lawyers who didn’t want them to get involved [in Jackson’s 2005 trial] and they both told me ‘Michael needs us, we’re going to be there’.”

Kieran Culkin on Jackson after the Martin Bashir interview:

“I’d like to talk about it, but it’s kinda weird as I haven’t spoken with Michael for over two years. I’ve just always been totally skeptical, obviously, from a really young age. I read stuff all the time in newspapers that I know for a fact is bullshit. And people believe it all. So, I don’t even read any of it anymore.”

Kit Culkin (Macaulay’s Father in 2005)

“Michael’s bedroom (an enormous room with alcoves and dressing rooms and a fireplace and French doors leading out to a private garden, as well as a stairway leading to the entire upstairs) was almost always an open place to hang out in, as was most all of the rest of the house. My children would sit on the bed, as would I, to play cards or checkers, or watch television or whatever, but then we would do so most everywhere else also.”

“They might of occasion fall asleep there, just as they might of occasion fall asleep most anywhere else, and at most any daylight hour. While they had a bedtime, I rarely enforced it, as they were, after all, at Neverland to play; and as is most always the case with children (as any parent will tell you), they never enforced it themselves, thinking that they should get some rest so as to be better rested to play again the coming day. Children don’t worry about “the coming day”.

He continued:

“First of all, I never saw or heard anything at all during my early days of knowing Michael to suggest that he was a pedophile. I would note that a busload or two of kids might arrive at the estate of an afternoon and be taken straight to the amusement park or the movie theater, and then just as swiftly be bused back off the grounds. In fact, I believe that there was an entire office in an adjacent building and an entire staff that was responsible for overseeing these visits; and I noted also that on no occasion at all did any of these children ever get asked to the house for any reason whatsoever.”

“These were all strictly well-planned and well-supervised excursions, and the people who made them up quite apart from the people (such as those of my own family) who were actual guests. And while we’re on the subject of guests, this list was hardly confined to children. Indeed, adults roamed most everywhere, many of them from the world of government, including (just for instance) former President and neighbor Ronald Reagan, together with “Just-Say-No” Nancy, as well as Secretary of Defense William Cohen and not a few others that I’ve since forgotten; none of whom certainly gave one the feeling that the estate was (goodness knows) a den of pedophilia.”

So now that you’ve heard from the Culkin’s directly, it seems odd that the media would call Jackson’s relationship with them odd without any real knowledge of it right? As is often the case, it’s once again the media and detractors of Jackson calling the relationship “weird,” while the actual parties involved have never described it as such.

Exhibit A from South China Morning Post written by Faye Bradley

What exactly was “controversial” about their friendship. Culkin never accused and always defended Jackson, later on becoming the godfather to his children as an adult. So, again, what exactly is “controversial?” Even stranger, is the fact that the entire article was seemingly written after actress Brenda Song (who is also Culkin’s partner) wished Paris Jackson a happy birthday. What did Jackson’s friendship with Culkin have anything to do with his daughter’s birthday celebration?

Exhibit B from Unilad written by Callum Jones

It’s clear “weird” was the SEO keyword here to generate traffic because Culkin never himself described that first phone call between them as “weird.” What he did say was weird, however, was the big deal people made over him/other kids sleeping in Jackson’s bedroom because of it being virtually a two-story apartment.

2005 Trial

As mentioned earlier, Culkin did indeed end up deciding to testify on Jackson’s behalf in 2005, especially after realizing some of the prosecution’s witnesses had taken the stand to involve his name in lies.

As documented in this May 2005 CNN report, two former Neverland employees had testified that they’d seen Jackson behaving inappropriately with Culkin in the early 1990s, which the actor reportedly found out by way of his friends. Here is the exact exchange from the report (which you can also see in the screenshot above):

“He said he first learned of the testimony when a friend called to tell him, “You better check out CNN. They’re saying something about you.”

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said.”

“I’ve never seen him do anything improper with anybody,” Culkin told jurors.”

I’ll be covering Culkin’s testimony when we get to the 2005 trial. For now, however, all you need to know is that Culkin threw quite possibly the biggest wrench into an already weak and desperate case from the prosecution.

Leaving Neverland

Upon the release of Leaving Neverland in early 2019, people once again waited to hear from Culkin, who maintained the same stance he did in 1993 and 2005. In a March 2020 cover story for Esquire, he told the publication:

“Look… I’m gonna begin with the line — it’s not a line, it’s the truth: He never did anything to me. I never saw him do anything. And especially at this flash point in time, I’d have no reason to hold anything back. The guy has passed on. If anything — I’m not gonna say it would be stylish or anything like that, but right now is a good time to speak up. And if I had something to speak up about, I would totally do it. But no, I never saw anything; he never did anything.”

Culkin noted that the last time he personally saw Jackson was at the 2005 trial, where Jackson told him that they shouldn’t speak to one another because he didn’t want to influence his testimony. He then told the publication about an encounter with actor James Franco on a plane:

“I ran into James Franco on a plane. I’d bumped into him two or three times over the years. I give him a little nod as we’re putting our bags overhead. Hey, how you doing? Good, how ya doing? And it was right after the Leaving Neverland documentary came out, and he goes, ‘So, that documentary!’ And that was all he said. I was like, ‘Uh-huh.’ Silence. So then he goes, ‘So what do you think?’ And I turned to him and I go, ‘Do you wanna talk about your dead friend?’ And he sheepishly went, ‘No, I don’t.’ So I said, ‘Cool, man, it was nice to see you.’ ”

So there you have it, thirty years of Culkin defending Michael Jackson. We’ll end this segment with a picture of Paris Jackson at Culkin’s Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony earlier this year (and the MJ Musical poster fittingly behind them).