Back in March, we shared a photo of a young man with a one-line caption: “His dad is one of the most popular singers ever…do ya see it…” The young man was Bigi Jackson, the youngest son of Michael Jackson, who had been spotted on a rare lunch date in Los Angeles that January. The boy the world first knew as Blanket turned 24 on February 21, and once you know whose son he is, the resemblance is hard to miss.
Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009, at 50, and he left behind three children who were 12, 11 and 7. Seventeen years later Prince is 29, Paris is 28 and Bigi is 24, and the roads they have taken could hardly be more different. One of them helped bring their father’s life to movie screens this year, another refused to have anything to do with it, and the youngest has quietly found a way into show business on his own terms.
What Happened To Michael Jackson’s Kids After 2009?
For most of their childhood, the public barely saw their faces. Michael famously took the children out in masks and veils, so the crowd at his memorial at the Staples Center on July 7, 2009, was seeing them almost for the first time. That was the day Paris, then 11, stepped up to a microphone that nobody had planned for her.
“Ever since I was born, Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine,” she said through tears, in words Time and CNN both reported, “and I just wanted to say I love him so much.” An estimated audience of hundreds of millions watched her say it, and for many of them it was the first time they had pictured Michael Jackson simply as a dad.
After his death, the three children were raised by their grandmother Katherine Jackson at the family’s longtime home, Hayvenhurst, in Encino. Prince and Paris share a mother, Michael’s second wife, Debbie Rowe, while Bigi was born Prince Michael Jackson II in 2002 to an undisclosed surrogate. He was still called Blanket when the cameras caught him at the memorial, and he began going by Bigi in 2015.
The oldest of the three grew up to take the most public role in their father’s story, and this year it put him on a red carpet.
How Did Prince End Up Behind The Biopic Michael?
Prince Jackson, whose full name is Michael Joseph Jackson Jr., was born on February 13, 1997, which makes him 29. He earned a business administration degree from Loyola Marymount University in 2019, and while he was a student there he co-founded the Heal Los Angeles Foundation, named in the spirit of his father’s Heal the World Foundation, to help homeless and hungry families around the city.
He also served as an executive producer on Michael, the Antoine Fuqua film that opened in theaters on April 24, 2026, with his cousin Jaafar Jackson, Jermaine’s son, playing the King of Pop. Prince admitted the first look at Jaafar in costume hit him hard. “It was really an emotional shock because I had not seen my father in a long time,” he told ABC News on the eve of the release. “I think that my father is probably one of the most misunderstood people out there.”
His personal life got a happy headline too. In August 2025, Prince announced on Instagram that he was engaged to Molly Schirmang, the girlfriend he met at Loyola Marymount and had dated for eight years. “Molly and I have spent a lot of time together and made incredible memories,” he wrote, as NBC reported, and one of the photos he shared showed the couple sitting on a bench with his grandmother Katherine. No wedding date has been made public.
When Prince walked the Los Angeles premiere of Michael in April, one family member was missing, and she had already told the world why.
Why Did Paris Jackson Keep Her Distance?
Paris-Michael Katherine Jackson was born on April 3, 1998, and she is 28. She signed with IMG Models in 2017, landed the cover of Rolling Stone that same year and has acted steadily since, from the film Gringo in 2018 to American Horror Stories in 2021 and a guest role on Doctor Odyssey in 2025. Music has become the center of her life, though. Her debut album, Wilted, came out in 2020, and her second, Happiest Day of My Life, arrived on August 21, 2026, on Republic Records, made with 4 Non Blondes singer Linda Perry. She spent the summer and fall on her first headlining run, the Zombies Tour, which wrapped its European dates in London on October 16.
On the biopic, she has been blunt. After a co-star suggested she had helped out, she posted on Instagram, “Don’t be telling people I was ‘helpful’ on the set of a movie I had zero per cent involvement in,” according to The Fader. She said she gave notes on an early draft of the script and then stepped aside. “So I just butted out and left it alone because it’s not my project,” she wrote. Hola reported in April that she did not attend the premiere.
Her bigger fight has been with the men who run her father’s estate, executors John Branca and John McClain. In May, a Los Angeles judge sided with her and ordered $625,000 in 2018 bonus payments to outside law firms returned to the estate, Good Morning America reported, and the executors’ lawyers said they disagreed but would comply. Then on October 29, she asked the court to move roughly $600 million into the Michael Jackson Family Trust, which she says has never been funded and which benefits her and both of her brothers. The estate disputes her account, and a hearing is expected in December.
Paris is not the only one of Michael’s children who has stood up in court over the estate, though. Her little brother did it first, and the person on the other side was their grandmother.
So What Does Bigi Jackson Do Now?
In March 2024, Bigi filed papers objecting to the estate paying for his grandmother’s appeal in her fight over a reported $600 million Sony catalog deal. He agreed the estate should cover her original objections, which he said had brought “essential evidence” that helped every heir, but he called a win on appeal “an extreme longshot,” Billboard reported. It was a rare public statement from the most private member of the family, and it showed he was paying close attention to his father’s legacy.
His real passion turned out to be filmmaking. Bigi made his writing and directing debut with a short film called Rochelles, which won Best Drama at the Santa Monica International Film Festival in 2024, according to the Santa Monica Daily Press. He has kept the work low-key in the way he keeps everything low-key, but he did step out for his father’s movie. On April 10, 2026, he joined Prince at the Berlin premiere of Michael, wearing a suit with a small nod to the moonwalk, Hola reported.
The clearest window into who he is came in 2021, when a 19-year-old Bigi gave his first real interview to Good Morning Britain at Hayvenhurst. He talked about climate change, telling the show, “I do think it’s important that we all know about it.” He also remembered heading to his dad’s room to watch him get ready. “He was a good dancer, he was a very good dancer,” he said.
Then he looked around the house where he and his siblings grew up and summed up his father better than any biopic could. “I think there’s a lot of history in this house and studio here,” he said, as Inside Edition reported. “And that’s what he was all about.”
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