Paris Jackson lifts lid on super secretive childhood with dad Michael
Paris Jackson gave rare insight into her childhood with her late father, Michael Jackson, in the latest “Call Her Daddy” episode.
“I’d wake up and I’d go to … the room that was our classroom, and we would go to school,” the 28-year-old told podcast listeners on Wednesday of her daily routine.
Paris clarified that she “didn’t grow up” at Michael’s Neverland Ranch amusement park but did spend “the first few years of [her] life” there.
“It was made very, very clear that all of the attractions there were not for us … that did not belong to us,” she noted. “That was for underprivileged children and children that were terminally ill that couldn’t go to like Disneyland.”
She explained that the “cool, very congruent line throughout [her] childhood that started there and continued” was that if she and her siblings — Prince, 29, and Bigi, 24 — did their chores and homework, they could have fun on Saturday and Sunday.
The model recalled following this structure when they “hotel hopped a lot” and “wouldn’t stay in one place for more than a year,” going to Chuck E. Cheese or Circus Circus on the weekends.
She added, “[It was] the same thing with television. We weren’t allowed to watch television or movies unless we were studying it for film with the sound off or on the weekends if we’d done everything we were supposed to.”
As for wearing face masks during public outings to stay incognito, Paris insisted this “made sense” at the time.
“[We were told], ‘If you do this now, you can go to Chuck E. Cheese and be normal because no one will know who you are,’” she explained, denying the practice was “scary” at all.
When asked to describe her dad, who died in 2009 at age 50, Paris dubbed him a “really funny guy that was [her] best friend.”
Later in the interview, she referred to herself as the King of Pop’s “little princess.”
As for navigating her grief after his passing, Paris called the loss “rough” — and said that transition stage in her life was a “crash course in gaining social skills.”
She also spoke to host Alex Cooper about her recovery from drug addiction, noting that her current “consuming relationship [is] with tobacco” since she is someone who has “constantly, historically reached outside of [her]self to find things to change or manage how [she’s] feeling or thinking.”
The actress, notably, has been sober since “the first week of 2020” after hitting her “breaking point, rock bottom.”
She started to “reach for things outside of [her]self” around 7 or 8 years old, and her substance abuse struggles began in eighth or ninth grade to combat feeling “restless, irritable, discontented and not very comfortable in [her] own skin.”
Paris has been open about her sobriety in recent years, including showing off her perforated septum caused by years of drug abuse in 2025.
That same year, she ended her engagement to fiancé Justin Long — and told Cooper she did an “uncomfortable … full-blown detox” and “reset” by avoiding flirting, “prolonged eye contact [and] extended hugs” post-split.
Paris now has her “priorities straight” and stressed that the last year has been the “best” of her life.
If you or someone you care about is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
