Child star Macaulay Culkin continues to stand by Michael Jackson, whose allegations of sexual abuse with young boys, despite being acquitted in 2005, has plagued much of his career and even his legacy since his death in 2009.
“He never did anything to me. I never saw him do anything. And especially at this flashpoint in time, I’d have no reason to hold anything back. The guy has passed on,” the actor firmly stated during an interview with Esquire.
“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,” he added.
Culkin also came to his longtime friend’s defense last year as well during an episode of “Inside of You” with Michael Rosenbaum, who raised questions about the age difference between Jackson and Culkin, who were nearly 22 years apart.
“It’s almost easy to try to say it was ‘weird’ or whatever, but it wasn’t, because it made sense,” Culkin explained. “It’s one of my friendships that people question, only because of the fact that he was the most famous person in the world.”
He went on to explain the fact that kids his age couldn’t relate to a child star, saying, “Nobody else in my Catholic school even had this… idea of what I was going through, and he was the kind of person who’d been through the exact same freakin’ thing and wanted to make sure I wasn’t alone in that.”
Documentaries such as “Leaving Neverland,” the Emmy nominated two-part film that details the abuse of two men who claim to be Jackson’s victims, are still looking to prove that Jackson was indeed a sexual abuser. However, Culkin is not interested in the film, as detailed in the chance encounter with James Franco, who asked him what were his thoughts on “Leaving Neverland.”⠀⠀⠀
“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,’ “Culkin divulged.
