Colman Domingo doesn’t want anyone to get it twisted when it comes to “Michael” or Michael Jackson. 

As criticism builds that the upcoming biopic softens or “whitewashes” parts of Jackson’s life, Domingo is defending the film by making one thing clear: the movie is not trying to tell every chapter of Jackson’s story at once. Instead, he said it follows the pop icon from his early years in the 1960s through 1988, ending before the later controversies that many critics are focused on. 

Domingo made the comments while appearing with co-star Nia Long on the “Today” show, where both stars emphasized that the film is told through Michael’s perspective. The biopic has already been the subject of debate over what it includes and what it leaves out. 

"There's a possibility of a part two that may deal with some other things that happened afterwards. This is about the making of Michael, how he was raised and then how he was trying to find his voice as an artist and be a solo artist. And then, the movie. . . That's what I have to say about that," Domingo said.

Director Antoine Fuqua said the film went through major changes in 2025 after legal restrictions tied to a 1993 settlement with Jordan Chandler’s family forced the production to cut material that had originally been planned, including scenes involving the Neverland Ranch raid. Fuqua has also said to The New Yorker that about 30% of filmed scenes were removed because of those constraints. 

That helps explain why some viewers feel the movie is sidestepping the more difficult parts of Jackson’s legacy. But the filmmakers’ defense is that “Michael” is intentionally structured as the story of an artist’s rise, not a full accounting of his entire public life. Domingo’s point is that the film is focused, not evasive. 

When a biopic about someone as globally known as Michael Jackson arrives, audiences are rarely just reacting to the movie itself. They are reacting to memory, myth, controversy, and the way culture decides who gets complexity and who gets flattened. That is why the debate around “Michael” has been so intense even before the film opened.

Lionsgate is already considering a sequel, and the film’s ending reportedly teases that possibility with the title card, “His Story Continues.” So for now, Domingo and the cast are asking audiences to judge the movie for what it is: one chapter, one perspective, one attempt to tell a story that has been argued and dragged over for decades.