Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | March 11, 2026
Colman Domingo is on the cover of the Wall Street Journal magazine, looking sharp as always. The profile delves into how the actor is having the best professional run of his career now that he’s in his 50s, after decades of supporting parts and thoughts of quitting the business altogether. It’s a great story, and as someone who thinks he should have won the Oscar over Adrien Brody for Sing Sing, it’s one that cannot help but prove inspiring. Domingo is hot, charming, talented, and can work an interview like nobody’s business. But Domingo’s next project is proving to be a tough one to promote.
Domingo is playing Joe Jackson in Michael, the biopic of the life of Michael Jackson. That movie, as you can imagine, is a veritable minefield of issues. How do you make a truly honest movie about the life of someone so damaged and controversial when his surviving family are the ones in charge (and his own nephew is playing him)? Will Jackson’s alleged victims be taken seriously (nope)? How much of this will be rooted in truth and not pure propaganda (probably all of it)? Frankly, it’s the 2026 release I’m most concerned about. The Discourse is going to kill us all.
One major member of the opposition to the movie is Paris Jackson, Michael’s daughter. Domingo had made some comments in an interview with People about how Paris had been helpful during production, to which she responded on Instagram, “don’t be telling people i was ‘helpful’ on the set of a movie i had 0% involvement in lol that is so weird.” Jackson then added, “I read one of the first drafts of the script and gave my notes about what was dishonest [and] didn’t sit right with me and when they didn’t address it I moved on with my life. Not my monkeys, not my circus.”
According to Domingo, his original comments were conflated and taken out of context by People, and the magazine did update the piece to reflect what her said. He says he DM-ed Jackson over Instagram to explain himself and that she responded by putting a heart on his message. “I hope that she eventually loves the tribute that we made about her father,” he said.
It must be very weird to be in the position of having your family make a movie about your dad that you want no part of. Her feelings are her own and I wouldn’t want to be in her position. A hell of a lot of other Jacksons are still making tons of money off of Michael and they don’t want the gravy train to end, regardless of how his kids feel.
Domingo is trying to be diplomatic with this topic. He’s playing the man who terrorized his family for decades, a father who, according to Michael and other siblings, beat them mercilessly. Of the abuse allegations, however, Domingo says, “I will say that he chastised his children. It’s always going to be arguable what’s right and a great method.”
Yikes. We’re really going with that angle? “Chastised”? Also, there’s no argument over whether or not whipping your kids — which Joe ADMITTED to doing — is a “right” or “great” method of discipline. That’s just violence. Joe Jackson is one of the true unmitigated monsters of pop. I get that Domingo, as an actor, has to find the humanity in him lest he end up playing a caricature, but this ain’t it. I can see why Paris isn’t returning calls for comment.
