What ‘Michael’ Gets Wrong: 6 Inaccuracies in the New Michael Jackson Biopic

Audiences were already abuzz after Michael premiered, when it came out that Janet, the youngest member of the Jackson family, does not appear as a character in the film. (Sister LaToya Jackson said Janet “kindly declined” to be depicted.) But a careful headcount only reveals six siblings: brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael (the core of The Jackson 5) and LaToya — meaning that, beyond Janet, neither eldest daughter Rebbie (one of several solo Jacksons to make the Billboard Hot 100, with Michael’s help) nor youngest son Randy are featured. (Randy’s absence causes several major omissions later on.)

Michael begins with The Jackson 5 rehearsing in their Gary, Indiana home in 1966 while patriarch and manager Joseph (played with mustache-twirling vigor by Coleman Domingo) barks orders, eventually taking his belt to whip young Michael (Juliano Valdi). Though Joseph’s abuse is well-documented, hardcore listeners may scratch their heads at the group singing “Big Boy,” a song first recorded by the group in 1967 and released on the local Steeltown label in early 1968.

One of Michael‘s most egregious inaccuracies is so glaring, there’s even a note about it in the end credits. The story of the group’s signing to Motown Records was obfuscated from the beginning: for promotional purposes, they were marketed as a discovery of The Supremes frontwoman Diana Ross. (Actress/singer Kat Graham was cast as Miss Ross, but noted in an Instagram story on April 23 that “certain legal considerations affected a few scenes” in the film, including the ones she shot.) 

What the film shows is a hybrid of the two accepted truths: on screen, The Jackson 5 play a set at Chicago’s Regal Theatre in 1968 — with Gladys Knight & The Pips performing first — and Joseph is engaged backstage by Suzanne de Passe, creative assistant to Motown founder Berry Gordy. In fact, the Regal gig saw the quintet open for another Motown act, Bobby Taylor and The Vancouvers, who arranged for them to cut an electrifying videotaped audition for Gordy. (Knight, for her part, saw The Jackson 5 at an earlier gig, but attempts to engage Motown were fruitless.)

What’s strangest about the scene is de Passe being won over by a performance of the Clifton Davis-penned “Never Can Say Goodbye,” which the group wouldn’t record until 1970, taking the track to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 the following year. This discrepancy is seemingly notable enough to warrant its own disclaimer in the credits, attempting to square the song’s place on the timeline.

Not long after Michael establishes The Jackson 5 as a commercial act, the film abruptly jumps to 1978, when Michael plans to record the solo album Off the Wall with producer Quincy Jones (whom he’d met on the set of the film version of the musical The Wiz), much to the chagrin of Joseph, who sees the family as “the brand” that needs constant attention. This narrative obfuscates that Michael was already no stranger to solo material, having released four LPs concurrent with his work in The Jackson 5 for Motown and yielding three top five Hot 100 hits, including 1972 chart-topper “Ben.” 

And with Randy absent, The Jackson 5 becomes The Jackson 4, with Jermaine having “made his choice,” per a dismissive Joseph. The “choice” was staying at Motown when his brothers decided to sign with Epic Records in 1976, a move no doubt inspired by having married Berry Gordy’s daughter Hazel three years before. In reality, Randy would serve as his older brother’s replacement on four Jacksons albums, before Jermaine returned to the fold, making the group a sextet for their much-hyped Victory Tour in 1984.

Jackson’s pre-Thriller year of 1981 is shown as an eventful one in the film. He adopts Bubbles, his chimpanzee companion; he also undergoes his first rhinoplasty, during which his surgeon asks him about his recent diagnosis of vitiligo, the pigment-destroying disorder that changed Jackson’s skin tone. While Michael sports a somewhat smaller nose on the album cover of 1980’s Triumph, The Jacksons’ fourth album for Epic Records, neither of these other events occurred so early: Bubbles wasn’t even born until 1983, the same year Jackson’s dermatologist Arnold Klein first diagnosed Michael’s skin condition.

Making the world’s bestselling album is sure to take up a lot of one’s time — but Michael’s biggest exploits in the year after Thriller‘s release in 1982 are almost entirely out of order in the film. Jackson is shown rehearsing with gang members (including one dressed exactly like choreographer Vincent Patterson) for the “Beat It” video, fine-tuning camera angles on the “Thriller” short film, earning blockbuster sales and an armful of Grammy Awards for the album, asking CBS Records CEO Walter Yetnikoff (portrayed in an odd cameo by comedian Mike Myers) to convince MTV to play the video to “Billie Jean,” and finally performing “Billie Jean” in 1983 for the Motown 25 TV special, where he popularized his signature dance step, the moonwalk. 

In reality, the “Billie Jean” video arrived to MTV in March of 1983, just as the track topped the Billboard Hot 100; Jackson performed it on Motown 25 later that month in a performance broadcast on TV in May, by which point the “Beat It” video was in heavy rotation on the video station. The “Thriller” short film didn’t premiere until December of 1983, helping build a second wave of success for its parent album that crested in February 1984, when Jackson (only a month out from shooting a Pepsi commercial where his hair caught fire) took home a record-setting eight Grammy Awards in one night. 

Surely more than a few people will be confused by the purported chronology of such an epochal sequence in pop history. If the creative team gets to fashion the sequel seemingly teased at the film’s abrupt ending, hopefully more attention is paid to keeping the major events of Michael Jackson’s career in order.