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Michael Jackson once turned grocery shopping into a Thriller-esque spectacle. In the early 2000s, the King of Pop, who’d never roamed a supermarket “like everyone else,” enlisted a Florida mall owner to stage a faux shopping spree. The store was cleared, staffed by his inner circle, and filmed for Michael Jackson’s Private Home Movies on Fox 2003.
“It’s my dream to go into a supermarket and just shop. People crowd around me…I don’t see the real thing,” Jackson explained in the footage. To mimic reality, his team transformed the venue post-closing hours. Relatives became cashiers, his nanny hid under a blonde wig, and a pan-pipe cover of Billie Jean hummed overhead. Even a Life magazine featuring a close friend, Elizabeth Taylor, was strategically placed.
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Jackson revealed in the charade, tossing cereal boxes into his cart, modeling yellow rubber gloves, and zipping down aisles. “It felt like a real environment,” he said, though the illusion cracked when he spotted familiar faces. “The woman in the blonde wig is my nanny!” Friends teased him, stealing his trolley and smearing his hat with dessert toppings. For Jackson, it was bliss. “Like being at Disneyland,” he quipped.
