Rashida Jones, daughter of Quincy Jones, is currently on a promotional tour for her role in a new Apple TV series “Sunny”.
As daughter of Quincy and being around Michael Jackson a lot during her childhood, many interviewers have asked her about that time.
When asked about her memories of the King of Pop during her childhood, the 48-year-old star told The New Yorker: ‘He was really young. My dad met him on The Wiz. He was maybe 19. He was like a big kid with lots of animals.’
‘Sorry, I was just sighing, because I was just thinking about how I was bit by his monkey,’ she recalled. ‘It was my fault. Well, no, it’s not my fault. I am not the one who put a chimpanzee in overalls and a diaper.’
‘Everybody else had left the room, and I was, like, ‘Give it back!’ He was playing with it and wouldn’t give it back to me. So I opened the cage, and he came out,’ she remembered. ‘Then he started running around the room and throwing books.’
Rashida proceeded to detail the incident, which she said was ‘a bit of a nightmare.’
‘I went up to him and was, like, ‘No! No!’ — because I’d seen Michael say ‘No!’ to him. And I slapped him on the head, just a light, little slap. And he took my hand like a sandwich and bit into it.
‘I know. Traumatic. He’s 40 and he lives in Florida now, I think. He’s retired. [From what?] Biting children?’ she mused, referring to the chimpanzee. ‘I saw that he’s the alpha male of his group, in whatever chimp retirement home he’s at.’
During a July 10 appearance on TODAY with Hoda & Jenna, Jones shared again the story.
“I have a scar,” she told co-hosts Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager while showing off the area where the chimp had left his mark.
When Hoda and Jenna asked Jones if she would go to Florida to visit Bubbles, she jokingly replied, “No, I think we’re good.”
As for her memories with the late singer, Jones, recalled when Michael Jackson and other celebrities got together at A&M Studios in Los Angeles to record their charity benefit song “We Are the World.”
The making of that song is told in Netflix’s 2024 documentary “The Greatest Night in Pop.”
“No one was allowed to be in the room, but we were around before and after,” she told Hoda and Jenna.
“I remember the big room. I remember Michael was recording his solo,” Jones continued. “The next day, he came back to perfect it. I remember my dad being extremely tired. They made a whole song in like a night, it’s so crazy, with the biggest people in the world.”
Having the record producer as her dad, Jones often got to see Jackson when he visited their house.
“He was like a kid, so he was kind of like my dad’s son,”
“I didn’t know anything else,” she said. “But I do have a deep appreciation now for what we were exposed to. Just like the best music, the best artists, the coolest family vibe. And I do feel like my sense of music and how meaningful it is to my life really started then. It’s like deeply embedded.”
