Janet Jackson’s is sharing a little bit more about her relationship with her brother Michael Jackson.
Like most brother-sister relationships she received her fair share of teasing.
She revealed her brother teased her about her weight and according to The Daily Mail she claimed her brother called her Cow, horse, and pig.
Read below:
‘There were times when Mike used to tease me and call me names. ‘Pig, horse, slaughter hog, cow,” she said.
‘He would laugh about it and I’d laugh too, but then there was somewhere down inside that it would hurt.
‘When you have somebody say you’re too heavy, it affects you.
Janet said her issues with her weight began when she landed the role in 1970s sitcom Good Times.
She was just 11 when she joined the cast during the show’s fifth season as Penny – a young girl whom Willona adopts after she’s abandoned by her abusive mother.
‘I’m an emotional eater, so when I get stressed or something is really bothering me, it comforts me.
‘I did Good Times and that’s the beginning of having weight issues and the way I looked at myself.
‘I was developing at a very young age and I started getting a chest and they would bind it so I would look more flat-chested.’
Asked if being in the public eye created the issue, she replied: ‘I probably would have wound up not having a problem.’
She also shared some of the tense times she went through with her brother detailing the moment they started to drift apart.
Jackson said that she and her brother, who died in 2009 aged 50, drifted apart as they grew older.
When he was first accused of child sex abuse in 1993, by 13-year-old Jordan Chandler, who alleged the singer molested him at his Neverland ranch in California, Jackson said she was devastated – and angry at the personal cost to her.
‘It was frustrating for me,’ she said.
‘We have our own separate lives and even though he’s my brother, that has nothing to do with me.
‘But I wanted to be there for him, to support him as much as I possibly could.’
The lawsuit was settled in January 1994 with a $23 million payout to the Chandlers.
‘Michael wound up giving money to the family. He just wanted it to go away, but that looks like you’re guilty,’ said Jackson.
She said she was at the time about to sign a deal with Coca-Cola, in what would have been the biggest brand deal of her career.
But it was derailed by the allegations.
‘When that came out, Coca-Cola said, ‘No, thank you’. Guilty by association. That’s what they call it, right?’
She and Michael later attacked the coverage of the allegations against him in their 1995 single Scream.
‘It was his song and I was there to support him,’ she said.
But she claimed she was frozen out by his team.
‘Michael shot nights, I shot days. His record company would block off his set so I couldn’t see what was going on. They didn’t want me on set.
‘I felt like they were trying to make it very competitive between the two of us.
‘That really hurt me because I felt I was there fighting the fight with him, not to battle him.
‘I wanted it to feel like old times between he and I, and it didn’t. Old times had long passed.’
A few years later her family tried to stage an intervention in his life at his Las Vegas home, with his brothers from The Jackson 5, but he refused to listen.
‘I said, ‘We wanted to talk about you guys going on tour again and if you guys would do that as brothers. I would be honored to open for you’.
‘He didn’t have much to say, he was standoffish. I was really upset.
‘My family chartered a private jet and they came for an intervention. It was a way of us getting close again and he wasn’t having it.’
She said the divisions had begun decades ago, when he released Thriller, in 1982.
‘It was Thriller, that’s when it all started to change,’ she said.
‘I remember really loving the Thriller album but for the first time in my life I felt it was different between us, a shift was happening.
‘That’s the time Mike and I started going our separate ways. He just wasn’t as fun as he used to be.’
To watch the trailer for Janet’s 4-hour Documentary, click here.
