Michael Jackson gained full custody of Paris and her brother Prince when he divorced wife Debbie Rowe in 2000.


Paris Jackson with her mother Debbie Rowe Credit: Paris Jackson/Instagram

Debbie Rowe gave birth to two children with Michael Jackson, Paris and her older brother Prince, before splitting with the pop star in 2000. In the divorce, he got full custody of the toddlers, who she didn't see for over another decade.

It wasn't until around the time of Jackson's 2009 death that Paris began asking about her mother "and the answers I got were sufficient to me," she revealed in a new interview on Call Her Daddy. "Just like, 'Oh, like what's her name?' And I got told her name, and I'm like, 'All right, cool'... you know, moved on."

Several years later, when Paris, Prince, and Jackson's youngest son "Blanket" were being raised by their paternal grandmother Katherine Jackson, the 15-year-old girl met Rowe for the first time since she had been in diapers. And it was like no time had passed.

"I remember coming downstairs, and she was in the living room with my grandma," Paris told host Alex Cooper. "I came in and I was just like, 'Hey, mom.' And she was like, 'Hi.' I sat down, we talked for a second, and then we went out for the day and just like hung out."

The mother-daughter bond was immediate, which Paris credited to their zodiac signs.

"She's a [Sagittarius], so she's got the fire, and I'm an Aries, so I got the fire. We're very similar," Paris said.

Horoscope harmony aside, their seamless reconnection benefitted from Paris' process in all things: "Expectations can kind of f— us up."

As she explained to Cooper, "If I walk into a relationship with expectations, [I'm] probably going to end up being maybe disappointed or frustrated or irritated or a resentment will be born or something, you know. And when I walk into something and I don't have expectations, it creates this really cool space for something organic to just blossom."

Paris' relationship with her mother has continued to flourish, as they've leaned on one another through the ups and downs.

In 2016, Rowe was diagnosed with breast cancer, and throughout the treatment process her daughter was her "rock," she told Entertainment Tonight.

"She's amazing. She's been with me the whole time. She was there. First phone call, [it] took her 30 seconds [to reach out] when she found out," Rowe said.

Paris, a singer who is about to go on tour opening for the Pretty Reckless, inherited her father's talent, but she shares the same musical tastes as her mother.

"It's cool, getting to know her, seeing how similar we are, getting into what kind of music she really likes," she told Willow Smith on Red Table Talk in 2021, a year after releasing her debut album, Wilted. "She really likes country and folk, so I sent her some of the stuff I'm working on."

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Most recently in May, she wished Rowe a happy Mother's Day on Instagram with a selfie of the two at a horse stable, most likely Rowe's Painted Desert Ranch in Palmdale, Calif. Paris captioned the snapshot of the smiling lookalikes: "Happy mothers day to the lady they used for my template during the cloning process."

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