Michael Jackon's 16-Year-Old Son Is Entertainment Tonight's Newest Correspondent
A group of adults will go to bed tonight knowing full well what they did, after Entertainment Tonight announced that 16-year-old Prince Michael Jackson would be joining the crew as its official child of a very famous dead person AKA "new correspondent."
Prince Michael's first assignment: procure "advice about pursuing his dreams" from James Franco and Zach Braff, whom he interviewed about pursuing his dreams and also their roles in upcoming Disney film Oz the Great and Powerful. You can watch them smile at him here.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Jackson got the job with the help (that is to say: interference) of ET weekend co-host Brooke Anderson, a 34-year-old woman who says that she and the high schooler have "a mutual connection." The connection is presumably their shared love of lobbing softball interview questions at celebrities who feel slightly awkward around them.
Anderson reported that Jackson, a teenager hired for stars to gawp at, "really did not need that much coaching," because he "was very smooth and confident."
Indeed, in the promo video for Jackson's interview gig (set to air on ET all week), he provides a laid-back foil to Anderson's manic, arm-waving, shriek-a-bean.
She even got him to talk about his deceased father—THE MOST IMPORTANT THING—by steering their conversation right into 1978's The Wiz, which starred Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow.
"Yeah, my dad was in the Wiz," said Prince Michael Jackson, adding that his father also "raised [him] right."
Jackson recorded his interview with director Sam Raimi and the Oz crew over the holiday weekend (no school!) and is expected to return from time to time to cover kid-oriented showbiz events or whenever someone wants to talk about Michael Jackson.
