{"id":237621,"date":"2026-04-30T15:00:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T15:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/30\/like-taking-care-of-a-baby-juliano-valdi-talks-pressure-of-playing-young-michael-jackson\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T15:00:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T15:00:15","slug":"like-taking-care-of-a-baby-juliano-valdi-talks-pressure-of-playing-young-michael-jackson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/30\/like-taking-care-of-a-baby-juliano-valdi-talks-pressure-of-playing-young-michael-jackson\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Like taking care of a baby’: Juliano Valdi talks ‘pressure’ of playing young Michael Jackson"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Juliano Valdi has compared the responsibility of playing Michael Jackson<\/a> to “taking care of a baby”.<\/p>\n

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Juliano Valdi plays the young Michael Jackson<\/p>\n

The 12-year-old actor portrays the young version of the late King of Pop in the biopic Michael and although he had a lot of fun working on the film, he also felt “pressure” to live up to the expectations of the Thriller hitmaker’s family.<\/p>\n

He told E! News: \u201cI knew that when they thought so highly about me, they were really confident in me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a big responsibility. I had to take care of that\u2014like taking care of a baby, basically, being so gentle with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a lot of pressure. I had to make everyone proud because they thought that I could play Michael Jackson<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nA number of members of Michael’s family, including his siblings La Toya Jackson and Marlon Jackson, often visited the set of the film, and Juliano was particularly determined to do his best when the Bad hitmaker’s mom, Katherine Jackson, stopped by.<\/p>\n

\nHe said: \u201cI remember the first day I saw the Jackson family. I remember seeing Katherine, and when I saw her I wanted to make her proud. So, I just brought Michael’s energy to the screen as close as I can.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nThe young actor hopes viewers will learn to understand Michael – who is played as an adult by his nephew, Jafaar Jackson – in a “deeper” way.<\/p>\n

\nHe said: \u201cI hope that they can understand who Michael was on a deeper level.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThey can understand who he was when he wasn’t on stage, who he was as a person. And I also want them to feel groovy in that Michael Jackson mode.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nMichael has been developed with the involvement of Michael\u2019s estate, including executive producer Prince Jackson, though his siblings Bigi Jackson and Paris Jackson are not involved.<\/p>\n

\nIts director Antoine Fuqua previously addressed the approach taken in making the film, emphasising collaboration with the family.<\/p>\n

\nHe said: \u201cYou\u2019re telling somebody\u2019s life \u2013 you want to make sure that they\u2019re happy.\u201d <\/p>\n

\nBut Paris Jackson has publicly criticised the film in a video shared on social media. <\/p>\n

\nShe said: \u201cThe film panders to a very specific section of my dad\u2019s fandom that still lives in the fantasy. And they\u2019re going to be happy with it.\u201d <\/p>\n

\nLaToya has praised Jaafar\u2019s performance in the film. <\/p>\n

\nShe said: \u201cOh my gosh, I have to tell you that Jaafar was absolutely fabulous. I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve seen the movie and you know how wonderful he is, how we all forget and think that we\u2019re watching Mike. It\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, I forgot this is Jaafar\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

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30 April 2026 Juliano Valdi has compared the responsibility of playing Michael Jackson to “taking care of a baby”. Juliano Valdi plays the young Michael Jackson The 12-year-old actor portrays the young version of the late King of Pop in the biopic Michael and although he had a lot of fun working on the film, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":237622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[15105,6477,15104,1750,13003,419],"class_list":{"0":"post-237621","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-make-up","8":"tag-antoine-fuquua","9":"tag-jaafar-jackson","10":"tag-juliano-valdi","11":"tag-katherine-jackson","12":"tag-latoya-jackson","13":"tag-michael-jackson"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}