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Has Michael Jackson‘s daughter Paris turned against him?
In the week when it emerged she is taking legal action over ‘lavish gratuities’ paid to the lawyers acting for the late King of Pop’s estate, I can reveal that she has also contacted one of the alleged victims of his sexual abuse.
Previously Paris, 27, has always said that she doesn’t believe that her ‘kind-hearted’ father could have sexually abused anyone, and denounced those suggestions as ‘lies’.
As recently as 2019, after the release of the Leaving Neverland documentary in which Wade Robson and James Safechuck claimed that Jackson had preyed on them, Paris said: ‘There’s nothing I can say that hasn’t already been said, in regards to defence.’
But as this newspaper revealed on Sunday, all five siblings in the Cascio family have now come forward to say that Jackson – ostensibly a friend of their father – groomed and abused them.
In a ghastly twist, each of the five believed only they were targeted by Jackson, and each thus carried the burden of the abuse alone into adulthood.
Now, a well-placed source says that Paris has contacted the Cascio siblings and expressed ‘empathy’ for their situations. In particular, she wanted to reach out to the Cascio daughter.
Paris Jackson arriving at Tom Ford during the Womenswear Spring Summer 2026
Paris, brother Prince and youngest brother Bigi all spent long periods of time with the Cascios in New Jersey.
Michael Jackson had met the children’s father Dominic at the Helmsley Palace Hotel in New York in 1984 and became ‘part of the family’.
Oldest son Frank was the first to be drawn under Jackson’s wing and wrote in a memoir, My Friend Michael, that he and his younger brother ended up accompanying the star on his European tour.
A source said: ‘Paris felt sorry for Frank’s sister and contacted her.’ Official spokespeople for Paris did not respond to requests for comment.
This summer, she took some by surprise when she distanced herself from the forthcoming biopic Michael, which is being made with the blessing of the Jackson estate and with Michael’s nephew Jaafar portraying him.
She said the film ‘panders to a very specific section of my dad’s fandom that still lives in a fantasy’.
Paris, who as one of Jackson’s heirs has collected $65 million from the estate, is a recovering alcoholic and heroin user.
She was raised solely by her father and met her mother, nurse Debbie Rowe, for the first time in 2011, two years after Jackson’s death from a drug overdose. He had been abusing the surgical anaesthetic propofol.
The legal action between the Cascios and the Jackson estate started after the now-adult siblings watched Leaving Neverland. In it, Robson and Safechuck (both of whom had previously denied abuse) said the singer sexually abused them when they were children.
Safechuck said he was abused from 1988 to 1992 and Robson from 1990 to 1996. They gave graphic descriptions in the documentary of Jackson’s alleged sex acts.
The Cascios reached an agreement with the Jackson estate in 2020. After five years, though, it expired; and since then there has been more legal wrangling. The family now want $213 million. The singer’s estate is hoping to get them to settle via arbitration.
Attorney John Branca admits to paying the family for five years and argues ‘keeping the matter private and allowing the estate to move forward with projects that would ensure future generations could share in Michael’s musical and creative legacy… could prove lucrative for Michael’s three children’.
A filing from the Cascio team at the LA Superior Court says: ‘From the early 1980s until at least 2009, Michael Jackson had intimate contact with the Cascio children.
‘The Cascio children were groomed, brainwashed, and severely manipulated to believe that each was uniquely ‘special’ to Michael and that their relationship with him was exclusive.
This deliberate emotional manipulation was designed to secure each family member’s loyalty and ensure their silence, making them feel indebted to Michael and isolated from any source of protection or perspective.
‘Through years of psychological conditioning, Michael cultivated dependence and fear in the young Cascios, making [them] believe they had no choice but to comply.
‘The effects of this conditioning persisted into adulthood, leaving [them] with a deeply ingrained belief that speaking out would constitute betrayal — a dynamic the Estate has continued to exploit in its dealings with them.’
The Cascios’ legal team say the Jackson estate ‘disguised’ their settlement as a ‘life rights’ agreement, and discouraged the children from seeking independent legal advice, describing the initial deal as ‘coercive’ and ‘unfavourable.’ Legal argument continues.
It ends with Blake getting $58,000 a day!
Blake Lively’s payday for acting in the now-infamous movie It Ends With Us has been revealed.
Legal documents show the actress was paid $1.75 million for taking part in the shoot, scheduled at six weeks — which worked out to just over $58,000 a day.
What’s more, her agents must have been feeling optimistic because there was a bonus of $200,000 if she won an Oscar for her role as florist Lily Bloom — and $100,000 for a nomination.
Blake Lively attends the 2025 Time100 Gala at Lincoln Center on April 24, 2025
Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively in It Ends with Us
In addition, Lively and her company were to receive a bonus of $250,000 if the film (which opened here in August 2024) took more than three times its cost at the box office.
In the event, none of the above came to pass… and the fallout from her, er, fallout with co-star Justin Baldoni, right, has resulted in a gaspingly expensive lawsuit, with legal fees for all concerned standing at more than $100 million.
Can Netflix talk Geri into doing a Spice doc?
Victoria Beckham is not – quite – as popular as her husband David. Well, her documentary is not.
The three-part Victoria Beckham series dropped on Netflix last week and is a bona fide hit, with 5.6 million views globally in its first week.
It is No 3 internationally – rather a long way behind the No 1 show, Monster, The Ed Gein Story, which has been watched by nearly 21 million people in two weeks.
The Spice Girls L to R Geri Halliwell, Victoria Adams, Emma Bunton, Melanie Brown and Melanie Chisholm at the Brit Awards in 1995
However, David’s self-titled documentary, which came out in 2023, attracted 12.4 million viewers in its first week… and went straight in at No 1.
Meanwhile, there are renewed attempts to get a documentary about the Spice Girls off the ground at Netflix. They came close to doing so two years ago, but Geri Halliwell-Horner was the holdout.
She doesn’t want to revisit those years for a number of reasons.
She struggled in the Spice Girls days with an eating disorder; and her happy but private life these days is as the wife of multi-millionaire Christian Horner, to name just two.
There’s also some beef with Mel B over Scary’s televised assertion that she and Geri ended up in bed together one night in the early days.
I understand at the premiere of Victoria’s series last week, attended by Mel C, Geri and Emma Bunton, there were conversations with Netflix execs about what a hit a documentary would be.
No Matter What, about Boyzone, was a success for Sky in February. And late last year the BBC had its well-received three-parter Boybands Forever.
Victoria Beckham appears on SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen Live at SiriusXM Studios on October 16, 2025 in New York City
A source says: ‘The idea is for David’s company 99 Films to make the show. Everyone knows they can be trusted to do a wonderful job. Everyone but Geri has said yes. The money would be big – in the millions – for each of them.’
Emmy-winning British producer Nicola Howson, who produced David and Victoria’s documentaries, is expected to be the one the group would turn to.
The ‘girls’ have a supportive but complex relationship with each other. Speaking on Heart Radio this week, Mel C ‘let slip’ that there are separate WhatsApp groups which exclude various Spices.
Talking to Emma – who hosts a show on Heart – she reckoned that she (Emma) was the only one included in all the chat groups.
‘There’s not one without you,’ Emma countered. Mel added: ‘Obviously there’s ones without the others. Now I’ve let that slip.’
Brothers who stole Mescal’s show
This year’s BFI London Film Festival has been a starry affair with George Clooney, Amanda Seyfried, Julia Roberts and more in town – and tonight we’ll have the pleasure of Sydney Sweeney on the red carpet for the boxing biopic Christy.
The audience at the gala screening of Hamnet which I attended – starring Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal – was emotionally drained by this astonishingly powerful movie.
Mescal and Buckley will both be in the Oscars conversation next year, but brothers Jacobi and Noah Jupe, pictured, are also exceptional.
Jacobi Jupe and Noah Jupe attend the Hamnet screening during the 69th BFI London Film Festival at the The Royal Festival Hall on October 11, 2025 in London, England
Jacobi, 12, is the young Hamnet – William Shakespeare’s son felled by the plague.
And Noah, 20, plays the actor taking the role of Hamlet – the play inspired by his father’s grief.
Hats off to casting director Nina Gold, as the resemblance between them adds a haunting edge to an incredible film.
Being part of rival Oscars campaigns brought actor Colin Farrell and director Edward Berger together… and resulted in the man from Dublin being cast in the German film-maker’s new project: Ballad Of A Small Player.
In the movie, which opens this week, Farrell plays Lord Doyle, a degenerate gambler adrift in Macau.
Berger explained: ‘Colin had The Banshees Of Inisherin and I had All Quiet On The Western Front and we met once in a while… backstage at these type of events, or in the sauna in a hotel.
‘I thought that an Irishman pretending to be an aristocratic Englishman would be a great twist. Luckily Colin thought so, too.’
Adolescence star Stephen Graham has waxed nostalgic about the days when he would head into Kirkby town centre with his ghetto blaster and a square of lino to breakdance. ‘It was just something we did as kids,’ he recalled.
‘We had a ghetto blaster and even brought our own lino along — you know the lino that people used to put in the kitchen back in the Eighties — and we used to go and do it in the town centre.’
He added: ‘I had a shiny shell suit back in the day, so something that you could spin on!’
She’s the Queen of Christmas but Mariah Carey seems to be heading for a bit of a festive nightmare. The iconic singer is booked for a residency at the Dolby: Mariah Carey’s Christmastime in Las Vegas. But ticket sites indicate that sales for the event, which kicks off on Friday, November 28, are very slow indeed, with some shows appearing to be no more than a quarter full at this stage.
