Macauley Culkin is standing firm that he was never one of Michael Jackson’s alleged victims of sexual abuse.
“Look, 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,” the actor, now 39, told Esquire.
“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.”
Jackson befriended Culkin, then not much older than 10, after Home Alone was released in 1990. The two spent a lot of time together, including at the self-proclaimed King of Pop’s Neverland Ranch.
A number of men have come forward, both during Jackson’s life and following his death, to claim they were repeatedly sexually assaulted by the singer when they were young boys. Culkin, though, has consistently defended Jackson.
Culkin said he last saw Jackson in the men’s room at the Santa Barbara County Superior Courthouse in 2005, where Jackson was on trial for molesting a 13-year-old boy (he was eventually acquitted). Jackson died in 2009.
Culkin, who is godfather to Jackson’s daughter Paris, shared “a good Michael Jackson story that doesn’t involve Michael Jackson at all” in the March issue of Esquire.
“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?’
“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.’”