Suzanne de Passe shared her decades-long connection with Michael Jackson.
Speaking with People Magazine at the premiere of Michael, de Passe recalled first discovering The Jackson 5 in the late 1960s.
At the time, de Passe was working with Berry Gordy and was invited by producer Bobby Taylor to watch a young group perform.
“He said, ‘I want you to see something.’ And I was standing, and he clapped his hand and said, ‘Okay, fellas, this is Suzanne. She works for Mr. Gordy and she can get us the audition,'” de Passe recalled.
She said, “They got up and they sang like four songs acapella, blew me away.”
“This is way before cell phones. So I went back to my apartment and called Mr. Gordy. I didn’t get him the first day. And when I finally spoke to him, I said, ‘Okay, so Gordy, I saw a great act.’ He said, ‘Great, that’s what you’re supposed to do. You’re my creative assistant.’ I said, ‘Wait ’til you see these kids.’ He went, ‘Kids? I don’t want any kid acts. Do you know how much trouble Stevie Wonder is?’,” she added.
Despite being new in Gordy’s team, de Passe admitted being confident about the group. “And my, I think, claim to fame is I did not give up. I was relentless. And when he saw them, it was the beginning of this history.”
The Jackson 5 was formed in 1964 and included Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon, and Michael Jackson. de Passe revealed that Michael was very much “a kid” when the band was thrust into stardom.
She said, “When we were on the road, we would all be on the same floor and keep our doors open and stuff like that. And he liked to hide in my room.”
“And you know, he’d be behind the curtain and you’d see his little feet sticking out from the curtain, the shower curtain, the closet and he would go, ‘Boo!’ And I would go, ‘Yeah, yeah, you really scared me. I was so scared,'” she added.
Noting, “For the next three decades, I called him Casper, and he answered. Michael was Casper and Marlon was Dudley, as in Dudley Do-Right, because he was very law-abiding.”
On the other hand, Suzanne de Passe also praised Jafar Jackson in the movie Michael, saying, “They have a movie because of Jafar. And all the things that went into it, of course, the production and the direction and all of that, the cast. But I think the big difference is Jafar.”
