New Macaulay Culkin interview

A month before Hughes died, in 2009, Michael Jackson died after being given an overdose of medication. If Hughes sometimes played the father Mack’s father couldn’t be, Jackson was often the schoolmate he never had. Jackson got in touch with Mack after Home Alone, and suddenly they were hanging out. His parents neither encouraged nor discouraged the friendship. The way Mack sees it, Michael had a similar childhood, which is to say that he didn’t really have one, because his father was forcing fame upon him. So, at twenty-two years older than Mack, living in a place called Neverland, he felt the same age, in a way.



Mack and Jackson used to prank-call people. Jackson used to do these voices, real nerdy—“Hello, I’d like to buy a refrigerator. How big are your refrigerators?” And Mack would laugh and laugh.



The last time Mack saw him was in the men’s room at the Santa Barbara County Superior Courthouse in 2005. Mack was twenty-four. Michael was forty-six. Mack was testifying in Jackson’s defense in People v. Michael Jackson, in which the singer was charged with intoxicating and molesting a thirteen-year-old boy who had cancer. He was eventually acquitted.



There was a short recess during Mack’s testimony. Mack took a leak, and Michael came in. Jackson said, “We better not talk. I don’t want to influence your testimony.” They laughed a little at this. Michael Jackson, who had been more famous perhaps even than Macaulay Culkin when he was eight, ten, eleven years old, looked whipped. Exhausted. Drained.



They hugged.

...


I ask Mack if he is bothered that people assume—because he was one of many boys who spent time at Jackson’s home, some of whom accused him of heinous acts of sexual abuse—Jackson must have abused him, too.



“Look,” he says. “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.



“Here’s a good Michael Jackson story that doesn’t involve Michael Jackson at all: 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.’ ”



Mack is godfather to Michael’s daughter, Paris, and they remain close. The next thing he tells me is that he has passed along to her his quirky habit of stealing spoons—from restaurants, from cafés, from airplanes. “It’s harmless,” he says. “It’s a harmless thing. It’s not like you’re ruining something, like stealing a chess piece, where the board would be incomplete.”



He and Paris give each other spoons. They have matching spoon tattoos on their inner forearms—Mack’s only tattoo, one of many for Paris. When she was starting to put herself out into the world in a public way, he gave her some godfatherly advice, vis-à-vis the spoons: “Don’t forget to be silly, don’t forget to take something away from this whole experience, and don’t forget to stick something up your sleeve.”