Janet Jackson finally addresses ‘secret baby’ rumours in new doco

Janet Jackson has stayed silent about a wild rumour that’s plagued her for almost 40 years – but now she’s speaking out.

Janet Jackson denies longstanding rumours that she secretly had a baby with ex-husband James DeBarge in the 1980s in her new documentary.

“I could never keep a child away from James. How could I keep a child from their father? I could never do that. That’s not right,” Jackson, 55, says in the upcoming special.

The Control singer recalls the chatter of a potential pregnancy starting to spread on the Season 4 set of the TV show Fame in 1984, Page Six reports.

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The pregnancy rumours came a couple of years before Janet really hit the big time with Control and Rhythm Nation.

“A lot of the kids thought I was pregnant ’cause I had gained weight and I had started taking birth control pills,” she says.

“And back then, you could pick up weight taking them, and that’s what happened to me, so that rumour started going around.”

Debbie Allen, who also starred in Fame, remembers being taken aback, too.

“These were rumours that were just flying around, honey, like hash in a diner,” Allen, 72, says. “Where was the baby? Nobody saw a baby. I mean, she was there with us all day, every day. Where was the baby?”

Jackson and husband James DeBarge in 1985. Picture: Getty

Jackson had already released two albums to middling success when she joined the Fame cast. In an attempt to seek independence from her controlling father and manager, Joe Jackson, she eloped with DeBarge in September 1984 when she was just 18.

But the couple’s marriage was short-lived, ending in an annulment in November 1985 after Janet found out DeBarge, now 58, had allegedly been using drugs.

Janet Jackson today: ‘I was just incredibly innocent.’ Picture: AFP

“I was just incredibly innocent,” she says with tears in her eyes in the documentary. “It’s just, to me, hurtful for someone to see that and just try to take advantage of it.”

Janet did become a mother in January 2017 when she and her third husband, billionaire businessman Wissam Al Mana, welcomed a son, Eissa. The pair separated only three months later.

This story originally appeared on Page Six and is republished here with permission