Inside The Making Of “Leaving Neverland” And How Michael Jackson’s Accusers Relived The Alleged Abuse
“I was so happy he died.”
The reaction was likely because the audience was filled with child sexual abuse survivors and their supporters. “I tried to set realistic expectations, which was everybody’s going to hate us, and no one’s going to believe us,” Safechuck told BuzzFeed News in an interview with Robson at HBO’s New York City headquarters.
Two years after their first interviews with Reed — and despite a renewed uproar of incredulity and hatred from Jackson’s fans and vociferous denials from Jackson’s family — Robson, now 36, and Safechuck, 40, agree that doingwas worth it. In an emotional interview with BuzzFeed News, both men relayed the profound effect the experience of making the film had on them, and how it helped illuminate their perspective on Jackson, and themselves.
Keeping Safechuck’s and Robson’s narratives straightforward was particularly crucial to Reed’s approach. He had read their accounts of Jackson’s abuse in their legal filings, but he knew he needed both men to speak only to what they knew and experienced at the time they experienced it, rather than through the lens of what they understood about those experiences now as adults. All told, Robson’s interview took three days; Safechuck’s took two.
Safechuck went into the interview thinking it would unfold in a standard question-and-answer format. Instead, when Safechuck would finish talking, Reed would often silently roll his fingers to get him to keep going. “And I’m like,” Safechuck said. “I don’t talk a lot. I’m not used to that, so that was hard.”
That was especially important when Reed began asking Safechuck and Robson about the explicit, physical details of their sexual experiences with Jackson, so the audience could get a complete picture of the extent of the abuse both men allege they endured. Describing the nature of the sexual acts they say Jackson engaged them in — sometimes multiple times a day — over many years was, understandably, the biggest challenge for them.
Safechuck had already mentioned the wedding offhand to Reed in their first interview, but talking about it again, in more detail, while actuallythe ring itself, hit Safechuck like a freight train. Safechuck’s voice began to tremble, his face went white, and his hands started shaking uncontrollably. It’s one of the most distressing moments in the entire film.HBO
“She was going to receive a certain amount of negative pushback and, you know, blame, for what happened,” Robson said. “Because I felt that towards her, as well, you know?” “Dan has a way,” he said, laughing. “Once they built their own relationship, she was like, ‘OK, I get what he’s trying to do.’”Robson’s mom Joy was trickier.
“[I was] realizing all sorts of connections I had never made before, connections to the ways Michael drove wedges between me and my father,” he said. “[I was] also having more sadness and more regret because I was so drawn into Michael’s…what seemed like light at the time — that it was because of Michael, I understand now, that I was pushing my father away. Then me being a father now and imagining that, and how much that would break my heart. And how powerless my father must have felt at times.
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