NEW YORK — Jaafar Jackson is interested in doing a “Michael” sequel that focuses on the child molestation allegations made against his famous uncle from the King of Pop’s perspective.

Michael Jackson’s 30-year-old nephew impressed fans with his portrayal of the controversial “Beat It” singer in a biopic that hit theaters in April. That movie smashed box office records, but was questioned by critics who took issue with the fact that it ends in 1988, which is shortly before serious sexual misconduct accusations sidelined Michael’s career. He died in 2009 from acute propofol intoxication.

Jaafar told GQ Middle East that a “Michael” sequel is in the works. He appears to hope that it takes on the darker years of Michael’s life.

“I think the second film will give even more insight from his point of view, because at the end of the day, (the allegations) are always from someone else’s,” he said.

He believes the claims against his uncle tell “someone else’s story” rather than that of the person accused of having improper relationships with children.

“It’s someone else’s idea of what it is, and it’s mainly driven by an agenda,” Jaafar said. “And that’s really the issue we’ve been having as a family — not having Michael’s voice being heard.”

He calls getting that perspective into the open a “very, very important” part of understanding Michael’s later years.

Allegations against Michael date back to 1986 and involve several accusers. He was booked on child molestation charges in 2003, but acquitted on criminal counts. He settled a $15.3 million civil suit with one accuser’s family in 2004, but admitted no guilt, according to CNN.

Jaafar recalled that he last saw his uncle in Beverly Hills a couple of months before the singer’s death.

“He was seeking a more spiritual journey just because of, I would imagine, the type of scrutiny and the level of pressure he was probably feeling from the press, that he wanted to find that sense of peace for himself,” he said of Michael’s final years.

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LONDON — Prince Harry and six others, including Elton John, have been ordered to pay an initial 9.5 million pounds ($13 million) to the publisher of Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper following their failed invasion of privacy case — and could face an additional 25 million pounds in legal costs.

In a judgment Friday, Justice Matthew Nicklin said in a written statement that the payment to Associated Newspapers Ltd. will have to be made by Aug. 28. The payment is at the upper end of expectations and marks a vindication for the journalists at the Daily Mail and a defeat for the losing claimants and their lawyers.

The claimants lost a High Court case in London last month during which they had alleged malpractice, such as the illegal hacking of phones, on the part of Associated Newspapers.

The other high-profile figures behind the case were Doreen Lawrence, the anti‑racism activist whose son Stephen was stabbed to death in 1993 as he waited for a bus; Elton John’s film producer husband David Furnish; actors Sadie Frost and Liz Hurley; and politician Simon Hughes. Lawrence’s costs are expected to be covered by the others.

In excoriating comments accompanying his award, Nicklin said “several features” were important in his decision, including the “speculative” nature of the claims and the failure of the claimants to “voluntarily” withdraw serious allegations that could no longer be backed up.

“The conduct was unreasonable to a high degree,” he said.

The publisher has said it incurred more than 34 million pounds during the case. Should it pursue the claimants for the remainder of the costs, and get the necessary legal approval to do so, then Harry and the six others will be liable for a further 25 million pounds or so.

The claimants took out insurance for around half of that total, in line with the budget estimates provided at the outset by the lawyers working for Associated Newspapers.

Though the judge said the costs appeared “excessive,” he said he would not impose a cap that would have limited the claimants' liabilities as it would have been “too broad brushed, would risk unfairness, and would be vulnerable to the charge that it was arbitrary.”

The amount that will be paid could well be determined in the future by costs judges, specialists who assess and determine financial outcomes in civil litigation when parties cannot agree.

David Bailey-Vella, chairman of the Association of Costs Lawyers, said the ruling “could not have gone much worse” for the claimants.

He said the claimants will “surely try again before the costs judges to try and show they relied on Associated’s original budget when buying the insurance and so should not have to pay more.”

Hughes, a former member of the centrist Liberal Democrats, said he was “disappointed and surprised” that Associated Newspapers’ recoverable costs were not limited.

None of the other claimants have yet commented on the judge's decision. They have until Oct. 2 to decide whether to appeal.

The publisher had strongly denied the claims made during the 11-week trial in London earlier this year. In his July 7 judgment, Nicklin said there had been a shortage of evidence to support the 97 claims and found there was a possibility that the reporting came from legitimate sources.

In a statement following the decision, Associated Newspapers said the judgment is a “devastating critique of an attempt to destroy a newspaper and the reputations of its journalists, editors and executives.”

“The truth is that these outrageous claims should never have been brought,” it said. “That they were pursued raises disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession.”

The judgment comes two days after it was made public that Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, are moving back to the U.K. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who are no longer working royals, decamped to California more than six years ago but will relocate back later this month to live in a nonroyal residence outside London.

Harry's defeat against Associated Newspapers brought an end to a trio of lawsuits accusing tabloid publishers of using unlawful tactics, such as phone hacking or hiring private detectives to dig up dirt on his life.

Harry won a judgment in 2023 that condemned the publishers of the Daily Mirror for “widespread and habitual” phone hacking. Last year, Rupert Murdoch’s flagship U.K. tabloid, The Sun, made an unprecedented apology for intruding on his life for years and agreed to pay substantial damages to settle his privacy invasion lawsuit.

Harry has said his litigation — in which he broke with royal family tradition to seek relief in the courts — was a primary source of his falling out with his father, King Charles III, and brother Prince William.

His grudge with the tabloids runs deep and his legal actions are part of his larger quest to reform the news media that he says damaged his relationships and made him “paranoid beyond belief.”

He blames the press for the death of his mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash in 1997 while being pursued by paparazzi in Paris, and for attacks on his wife, Meghan, that led the couple to abandon royal life and move to the United States in 2020.

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Meghan Markle’s hot new opportunity to appear in a Guy Ritchie Netflix drama that’s filmed in the United Kingdom has reportedly been withdrawn, due to all the backlash and chaos surrounding the sudden, shocking news that she and Prince Harry plan to leave California and move back to the U.K. by the end of the month.

Tina Brown, royal author and famed former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, reported Saturday morning that the offer to the American former TV actor to appear in Season 3 of Ritchie’s “The Gentlemen” “has been withdrawn” due to the backlash over the casting. Deadline and other U.S. outlets had reported Friday that the “Suits” star was in “early talks” to appear in the crime drama.

“The backlash in the U.K. was so intense, it became untenable to go forward,” Brown reported on her Fresh Hell Substack. “This does not bode well for Meghan’s acting comeback in the UK. More to come.”

Brown and other royal observers also would say it doesn’t bode well for Meghan and Harry’s return for the U.K. if she doesn’t have some kind of job lined up in the U.K.

On Friday, Brown reported that having work in the U.K. would make it easier for Meghan to join Harry in moving back to his home country. The job, Brown reported on her Substack, “allows Harry, at last, to get Meghan’s buy-in for his growing desire to get the hell out of paradise and go home to the world he understands.”

For Meghan, the U.K. is not a welcoming place. The Duchess of Sussex and aspiring lifestyle guru has become widely unpopular among the British public since she and Harry exiled themselves to the United States in 2020 and publicly complained that the royal family and the British media were racist and treated her terribly and that she and their two children, Archie and Lilibet, were not safe visiting.

“The level of general hostility toward her is off the charts these days,” added British journalist Tom Sykes, who writes the influential The Royalist Substack. On Saturday, Sykes also shared Brown’s report and said he had reached out to Meghan and Harry’s office for a comment about the reported collapse of the Ritchie talks. He said he had not heard back.

Over the past two days, Sykes also has raised questions about whether Meghan and Harry were truly moving back to the U.K. or if this was some kind of publicity stunt.

Sykes, who also writes for the Daily Beast, noted that the language that Sussex sources have slipped to major media outlets about their return has been “flexible.” They’ve used the term “extended period,” which suggests that they don’t intend to make England their new home base after all, even though their sources also have said that they’ve enrolled Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5, in British schools.

The “implied assumption” is that their U.K. sojourn is not meant to be forever, Sykes said. He added: “I find it incredibly hard to imagine that Meghan is going to be any happier living in the U.K. this time round than she was last time” — when she at least had the cachet of being a working member of the royal family.

More than that, it’s arguable that “extended period” could also mean that the couple only plan to stay in the U.K. for as long as it takes Meghan to film her role in “The Gentlemen,” Sykes also wrote — before Brown reported Saturday that the role has been withdrawn.

If the role has been withdrawn, Sykes said on Saturday that it could bolster the idea that Harry and the children will move to the United Kingdom, while Meghan will “come and go,” depending on her work opportunities. Sykes was told by a friend of Harry’s that, for Meghan, it would be “mainly, go.”

Meanwhile, British entertainment writer Rob Shuter reported on his Naughty But Nice Substack Thursday that Meghan had only agreed to move back to the U.K. for six months. He, People magazine and other outlets also said the couple would keep their mansion in Montecito and vacation home in Portugal.

Shuter furthermore reported on Friday that Meghan had only agreed to go along with Harry’s desire to return to his home country for a period of time — so he could reconcile with his father and put their children in British schools — because she felt it was necessary to make her husband happy and save their marriage.

Harry has become “miserable in California and increasingly unhappy with the life they built in Montecito,” Shuter reported. He said sources told him that the “marriage is in serious trouble — and moving back to the U.K. is their last attempt to save it.”

“They are not in a good place,” a source told Shuter. “Harry is deeply unhappy, and Meghan knows she cannot keep asking him to live a life that is making him miserable.”

“Meghan is not doing this because she wants to,” Shuter’s source further said. “She is doing it because she believes she has to. She does not want to lose Harry, and she knows something has to change.”

Other royal journalists question whether a return to the U.K. would solve the couple’s reported problems, which include their estrangement from Harry’s father, King Charles, and his brother, Prince William. The king has made it clear that Harry and Meghan won’t be returning to royal duties and they won’t be given a royal residence to live in.

It’s also been reported that they are hurting financially. Their multimillion-dollar media deals with Netflix and Spotify have dried up and Harry is potentially facing millions of dollars in legal fees after losing his privacy case against the Daily Mail.

“I just can’t see this working,” royal biographer Andrew Lownie said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph’s “Daily T” podcast. Lownie said he couldn’t see Los Angeles native Meghan being happy “enjoying a Cotswolds winter with the rain coming down.” He was referring to speculation the couple were moving into a home in the Cotswolds, the picturesque rural area west of London that’s become popular with British and American celebrities.

“I wonder if this (return to the U.K.) is the something that breaks the camel’s back in terms of their relationship,” Lownie continued. “But it’s difficult, you know, if you’ve got children in schools here, to take them out of school after six months.”

In general, Lownie agreed with what many others are saying — that moving back to the U.K. for “an extended” period is “quite a dramatic thing to do. That’s why I say there must be more to this story than just seeking new educational pastures for their children and fresh business opportunities for them.”

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From combined wire services