Incredibly, MJ would come to the humble Safechuck house for dinner he invited the family to a Pepsi convention in Hawaii. “This piece of jewelry is like a Rolex ring with a diamond in the middle.” James Safechuck grew up in California’s Simi Valley, started doing commercials at age 7 (he was “money in the bank,” as his agent bragged to his mom), and a few years later met Michael Jackson, when they costarred in a Pepsi ad. “This contrast began,” Wade says now, “between the day and the night.”
He had Michael all to himself, for five whole days. Wade’s family-his mother, his grandmother, his older sister-were off on a side trip to the Grand Canyon. A movie theater with a take-all-you-want candy counter and a few private rooms in the back.
His prize: tickets to a Michael Jackson concert and a private meeting with his hero.Ī few years later, he found himself at Neverland Ranch, Michael’s sprawling and utopian compound in Southern California. At 5, decked out in a precocious child’s approximation of MJ’s spangly tough-guy outfit from the cover of his blockbuster 1987 album Bad, Wade had won a dance contest at a shopping mall in his native Brisbane, Australia, despite technically being too young to enter.
He taught me to how to do the Moonwalk.” In 1990, Wade Robson was a 7-year-old dance prodigy and Michael Jackson superfan who found himself learning at the feet of the King of Pop himself. “The days were filled with playing tag, watching movies.