It’s one of those rumors that never seemed to go away, like Richard Gere and that pesky rodent or Rod Stewart and the stomach pump. During the ’80s and ’90s, people often whispered that Janet Jackson had secretly had a baby with ex-husband James DeBarge, during their short-lived marriage.
Now, the legendary singer, 55, denies it once and for all in her upcoming two-night Lifetime and A&E special.
“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.”
She remembers the chatter of a potential pregnancy starting to spread on the Season 4 set of NBC’s Fame — in which she played Cleo Hewitt — in 1984.
“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 rumor started going around.”
Debbie Allen, who starred as Lydia Grant in the show, remembers the gossip, too.
“These were rumors 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?
Janet eloped with DeBarge in September 1984 when she was just 18. It ended shortly thereafter in an annulment in November 1985 when Janet found out he had allegedly been using drugs.
“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 Jackson airs Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. ET on Lifetime and A&E.
(via Page Six; photo: MediaPunch)
