Jaafar Jackson is ready to return to the world of Michael Jackson and says the second chapter could reveal a side of the King of Pop that audiences have never seen on screen.
In a new interview with GQ Middle East, Jaafar Jackson reflects on the extraordinary experience of portraying his uncle in Michael and offers intriguing clues about what could come next as work continues on the sequel.
After spending around three years immersed in Michael Jackson’s life, music, movements and mindset, Jaafar says the journey has left him with an even deeper understanding of the man behind the global icon. And for him, the story is far from finished.
“There’s so much more to Michael’s story,” Jaafar tells GQ Middle East. “There’s so much to who Michael was and how he expressed himself.”
That perspective could prove particularly important for Michael 2. The first film deliberately concentrates on Michael’s early years and rise to superstardom, ending around the release of Bad in 1987. The sequel therefore has the opportunity to explore the decades that followed, a period marked by extraordinary artistic achievements, unprecedented fame, intense media scrutiny, personal struggles and the controversies that surrounded Michael during his later life.
According to Jaafar, the screenplay is still being developed, and he does not control what ultimately appears in the movie. But he is clear about what he hopes the sequel will accomplish.
“I think the second film will give even more insight from his point of view,” he says.
For Jaafar and the Jackson family, that distinction matters. He argues that Michael’s later years have frequently been presented through the perspectives of others, while his own voice has often been missing from the conversation.
The sequel, in Jaafar’s view, represents an opportunity to bring that perspective back into focus, particularly during the final years of Michael’s life.
A different look at Michael
One of the most fascinating revelations from the GQ Middle East interview concerns Michael’s private thoughts and writings.
Jaafar had access to journals and notes from his uncle’s collection, giving him an unusual window into Michael’s personality away from the stage. What he discovered was a man who, despite becoming one of the most famous people on Earth, retained a remarkable sense of curiosity.
“One of the notes was like, ‘As soon as I walk out of the street, I want 10,000 people stopping in their tracks and just watching me,’” Jaafar recalls.
He describes many of Michael’s thoughts as being expressed almost through “a child’s eyes”, adventurous, curious and driven by imagination.
That youthful curiosity, Jaafar believes, never disappeared.
Michael’s later years also reveal another side of his personality: the businessman and visionary. Jaafar points to his uncle’s extensive involvement in music publishing and catalogue ownership, noting that Michael continued looking for new opportunities and acquiring music even as his own career entered a radically different phase.
He also describes Michael’s interest in spirituality during his later years, including his reading of Deepak Chopra and other spiritual teachers.
For the sequel, these details could help create a portrait that extends beyond the familiar headlines and headlines-driven image of Michael Jackson.
The final chapter
Perhaps the most emotional part of Jaafar’s recollections concerns the last time he saw Michael.
The family had gathered for a celebration honouring Joe and Katherine Jackson’s anniversary. Michael was preparing for his This Is It concerts in London and was excited about having his family attend.
Jaafar remembers sitting across from Michael and his father Jermaine while the two men sang together a cappella.
“I was just observing, it was special…” he recalls.
Michael’s final words to Jaafar were simple: “See you in July.”
He died two months later.
That memory could carry enormous weight in Michael 2, particularly if the sequel eventually reaches the This Is It period and the events surrounding Michael’s final months.
The controversy that cannot be ignored
The biggest question surrounding the sequel remains how it will handle the controversies and allegations that defined much of the public conversation about Michael during his later life.
Critics of the first film argued that ending around Bad allowed the production to avoid confronting some of the most difficult chapters of Michael’s story. Jaafar acknowledges that the screenplay for the sequel is still being developed and says he has no final say over its scope.
His preference, however, is clear: he wants Michael’s perspective to be part of the story.
For Jaafar, that does not mean simply repeating what has already been said. He believes audiences deserve to understand Michael as a human being, rather than viewing him exclusively through the controversies surrounding him.
He describes the first film as a story of Michael’s roots, showing “who he was as a human being first” and hopes that the second movie carries that understanding into the later years.
“He never stopped treating people with kindness,” Jaafar says, adding that despite everything Michael experienced, “his heart still stayed the same.”
That is a particularly revealing statement about how Jaafar approaches the role. He is not simply recreating Michael’s performances. He is attempting to understand the person underneath them.
Jaafar’s Michael journey continues
Playing Michael has also changed Jaafar’s own ambitions.
Before the film, he was developing his own music career and was initially unsure whether stepping into the role of his uncle was the right decision. After spending years living inside Michael’s artistic world, however, Jaafar says his perspective has changed dramatically.
“Me doing it as Jaafar would just feel weird,” he tells GQ Middle East, explaining that performing Michael’s songs and dance vocabulary gave him an experience he does not feel he could reproduce as himself.
Instead, the experience has pushed him toward acting and toward roles that demand total transformation.
For Michael 2, that means Jaafar could once again be preparing for an extraordinary challenge: moving from the young Michael who conquered the world to the complicated, intensely scrutinised figure of the 1990s and 2000s.
There is still no confirmed timetable for his return to production, and the sequel remains in development. But Jaafar’s comments make one thing clear: he does not believe Michael Jackson’s cinematic story ends with Bad.
“There’s so much more to Michael’s story.”
And if Michael 2 follows through on Jaafar’s vision, audiences may finally see the King of Pop’s final decades explored through a more personal and intimate lens, the superstar, the businessman, the artist, the spiritual seeker, and, ultimately, the man Jaafar knew simply as Uncle Michael.
