Paula Abdul was one of the many friends of the late Michael Jackson who turned up for his “This Is It” premiere in Los Angeles on Tuesday night and she had a surprising revelation – the King of Pop used to pull pranks on her when she was a young dance diva.
At 18, Paula, then a Laker Girl, was brought in to direct and choreograph the Jacksons’ Victory Tour, and at last night’s premiere, she told Access Hollywood’s Tony Potts, it was during that experience that she got to know Michael The Joker.
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“I… got to know him behind the scenes as a real person,” Paula smiled. “I was always the butt end of jokes. I always bought into everything that he was saying.
“He punked me,” Paula continued. “The whole family did.”
In fact, Michael used one of his most famous pets to fool the teenage Paula.
“He punked me with Bubbles the Chimp,” Paula revealed. “Bubbles smelled very strange to me and I love Bubbles, but he smelled really strange and [Michael] said, ‘That’s just the way monkeys smell.”
Paula said she protested Michael’s statement, but he insisted he was correct. Only later did she learn the truth.
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“I believe… he doused [Bubbles in] Christian Dior,” she said.
And there was more fun for Michael at Paula’s expense.
“When mopeds first came out, he put me on a moped, didn’t tell me how to work it,” Paula recalled. “I fell right into the rose bushes, thorns everywhere!”
Beyond the pranks, Paula said she learned so much from her time with Michael.
“I got to see entertainment at its finest and be a part of something so big and I learned so much from Michael,” she said.
“He was so dedicated,” Paula added later. “It was truly remarkable to watch and it taught me as a choreographer that it’s okay to make people work really hard because the end result is going to be fantastic. Michael never gave anything but fantastic.”
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