Prince Jackson Recalls Growing Up at Neverland, Calls Dad Michael ‘Childlike,’ ‘Awesome’

Prince Jackson is pulling back the curtain on life with his famous father, the late Michael Jackson, and it seems it was anything but typical.

The 29-year-old recently appeared on Australia’s Sunrise program on Channel Seven, where he reflected on growing up at the pop icon’s sprawling Neverland ranch, which also doubled as an amusement park.

“As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that a lot of what I think is normal life is not normal life,” the King of Pop’s eldest child, who also served as the producer of the new biopic Michael, said, according to the Daily Mail.

Still, he insists his childhood had plenty of ordinary moments, just with an extraordinary backdrop.

“Growing up at Neverland with my siblings and my father, for us, it was hanging out together as a family, but with the backdrop of elephants and giraffes walking in the background,” he explained, per the outlet.

“We spent a lot of time playing board games together, reading books, watching movies,” he recalled. “It truly was, and is, magical. It felt like your own personal Disneyland.”

When it came to fatherhood, Prince didn’t hold back his praise. He called Michael an “awesome” dad and said it was “really fun to just spend time with” him.

“I would love to have kids and, you know, take notes on what he did as a father, but he was always on our level in a way,” Prince said. “When he played with us, he played with us. You know, he got down, and he was playing with the toys and making up stories…,. He just had a very childlike nature that was so much fun, always playing pranks on people and stuff.”

One memory that stuck? Watching his father’s iconic “Thriller” music video.

“Terrified,” Prince revealed of his and his siblings’ reactions at the time. “He told us that it was real, like it wasn’t special effects or anything like that.”

Life as the child of a global superstar also meant constant security. But Prince said he never felt cut off from the world.

“I also see a lot of effort that was put to kind of mitigate that isolation,” he said.

“I grew up in a big family, and so I have 40 plus cousins, and I see them as my siblings and my friends,” he added. “And so I never felt lonely. But definitely a unique way to grow up.”

Michael died in 2009, leaving behind three children, including Prince and daughter, Paris Jackson, 28, with his ex-wife Debbie Rowe. His youngest son, Bigi Jackson, now 24, was born via an anonymous surrogate mother.

The new musical biographical film Michael, which premiered in Los Angeles on April 20, stars his nephew, Jaafar Jackson in the lead role. The movie’s timeline ends in 1988 and reportedly does not touch on the allegations of sexual abuse that Michael faced — and repeatedly denied — before his death.