Macaulay Culkin And Michael Jackson Had A 'Normal Friendship,' Actor Says

Macaulay Culkin defended his “normal friendship” with Michael Jackson in a new interview on actor Michael Rosenbaum’s podcast “Inside of You .”

“He reached out to me because, yeah, a lot of things were happening you know big and fast with me and I think he identified with that,” Culkin said in the episode released Tuesday. “At the end of the day, it’s almost easy to try to say it was weird or whatever, but at the end of the day, we were friends.”

When Rosenbaum questioned the extreme age gap between the two, the actor said he was a “peerless person” growing up and going through the same sort of thing Jackson experienced. 

Today, Culkin is 38, about six years older than Jackson was when he first befriended the “Home Alone” actor, who was about 10.

“Nobody else in my Catholic school even had, like, this much idea of what I was going through. And he was the kind of person who’d been through the exact same frickin’ thing and wanted to make sure I wasn’t alone in that kind of [experience],” Culkin said, adding that he was “hilarious” and “sweet.” 

“He was fucking hilarious,” the actor said, after mentioning he would prank call people with Jackson. “He was charming, fucking funny, silly.” 

Culkin later added, “It was a normal friendship,” even calling it “mundane.” 

The actor testified in defense of Jackson at the singer’s child molestation trial in 2005, calling accusations against the “Thriller” singer “absolutely ridiculous .” He admitted to sharing a bed with Jackson on several occasions  but said nothing improper happened. 

“He never molested me. I think I’d realize if something like that had happened,” Culkin said during the trial, according to The Guardian . 

Culkin also has spoken about how he first met Jackson when the actor performed in “The Nutcracker” at age 9.  

“He came backstage before the show. He loved dance, he was a dance man. He came backstage with Donald Trump  because they were friendly back then,” Culkin said on Marc Maron’s “WTF ” podcast last year. 

“I remember he looked at me like, ‘I know you from somewhere. Oh, Uncle Buck, yeah you’re funny.’ Then after ‘Home Alone’ came out, he reached out to me and my family,” the actor said .

“He enjoyed my youthfulness,” Culkin said. “He liked being a kid with me. It never struck me as odd. I never felt uncomfortable. That was just the way he was.”