Singer, songwriter, and broadway actress Stephanie Mills revealed in a recent interview that she and Michael Jackson dated, and she gave a lot of insight into their relationship.
Stephanie said that she and Michael Jackson were a year apart in age, and she met him while she was playing Dorothy in the Broadway musical, The Wiz.
She said Michael and his family would come to the show all the time, and they would watch the show from some box seats she had reserved for her family.
When I did The Wiz on Broadway I met him because they came to the show lots and lots of times.
And then I developed a friendship with Hazel, Hazel Gordy, and we hung out a lot.
And we hung out a lot, you know… It’ll be me, Hazel, and Jermaine.
And we just became friends, Hazel and I, and then Michael and I got close…
He would be backstage and sit in my box. I had a box in the theatre where sometimes when my friends or family would come they could sit there. That was right above the stage.
And he would come and sit there, and then come backstage after.
And hang out in the dressing room, and then go see the scenes that he really liked.
When asked how was Black Michael back then? Stephanie responded:
Gentle! He was a gentlemen, very kind, loving, you know, I never heard him say a bad word about anyone.
I never heard him talk down or negative to anyone. He was just very kind and very easy to be with.
And he loved chocolate chip cookies, which I loved. Chocolate chip cookies was my favorite.
But, we would ride in the car, you know, up and down of Ventura, and he would always want me to go into the movie house and get, like, popcorn and things.
Because he said, ‘They’re not going to say no to you. You’re not going to let them tell you no you can’t come in just to get popcorn,’ and I didn’t.
If they said no, I was just like, ‘Well, I just want to get some popcorn,’ and I would get it, and we would get in the car and ride off.
But, he wasn’t… Micheal was not a punk!
He was not soft as people think. He wasn’t. He just didn’t show that side of him a lot.
But, what he wanted, he knew what he wanted, he knew how to get it.
He was very strategic in things that he did.
Stephanie Mills confirmed that these events took place before Michael Jackson’s Thriller album and before he blew up as a solo artist.
She said when she spent time with Michael, she was in heaven.
…So when we became friends, and I spent a lot of time with him I was, like, in heaven because this was, Michael Jackson, that was on the covers of Right On magazine, and Ebony, and Jet.
And he had that big afro, and he was so handsome to me. He was so so handsome, but Michael didn’t think he was handsome…
Because he was suffering with some acne things and he didn’t like that, and some of the fans weren’t too kind to him when they would see him with his acne.”
She said she wasn’t surprised that Michael dated her back then because his mother wanted him to date Black girls back then, and his family liked them being together, but Michael wanting so much more is probably what caused them to go their separate ways.
He wanted to be the biggest star in the world, and he wanted to associate with certain people that I didn’t want to associate with.
So, we went in different paths…
And he wanted to be a certain way, you know, he wanted to be a certain way.
And he lived his life the way he wanted to, you know?…
He liked a certain type of woman and thought that it would be best for him in his career to be with certain types of women…
Lisa Marie Presley, Brook Shields, Madonna…
Well, he took Madonna to the Oscars one time I don’t think they dated, but they went out that time.
…I think that he felt he would be more accepted in the world that he wanted to go in.
In the world he wanted to dominate. I believe that he felt that.
…That’s why he decided to call himself the ‘King of Pop’ because Elvis Presley was the ‘King of Rock & Roll.’
So he wanted a title like that… And he wanted to live that kind of lifestyle. He wanted to be that type of artist.
So he made himself look the part that he felt would get over… that he would become a huge star…
I just could see it in his behavior. I could just see it back then in his behavior, and when he would go to certain houses or invite me and all that.
I didn’t necessarily want to go. I knew what direction he was trying to go in. I could just see it.
Stephanie Mills admitted to being unapologetically black and a bit too black for Michael.
…But, he knew it!… I mean, I would call Michael the N-word, you know, all the time and he thought that was funny, and then when I would hang out with LaToya he would ask her, ‘Well how many times did she call you that,’ you know?…
Because that was a word we used, you know, so… Yeah, I was a bit too Black for him. I was, I was too Black.
Watch the clips of the Stephanie Mills interview from VLAD TV below:
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