The ex-wife of Michael admits that she feels sorry she didn't save the King of Pop, telling Oprah Winfrey 'I know it's naive to think that I could've, but I wanted to.'
- Oct 22, 2010
AceShowbiz - For the first time ever, Lisa Marie Presley has finally agreed to open up about her ex-husband Michael Jackson after more than 15 months of his death. In a recent interview, which was recorded at her home in England, with Oprah Winfrey, Lisa admitted that she regretted she didn't try harder to save Michael.
"I know it's naive to think that I could've, but I wanted to," Lisa said on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" aired on Thursday, October 21. "Had I made a call, had I stopped being so shut off from him, had I just said 'How are you?' I really regret that I didn't." Lisa, however, believed Michael's death was inevitable, saying "I think that was a train heading in a certain direction that no one could have stopped. I've had to really get my head around that in order to stop the pain."
Lisa went on saying that it took his death to make her realize Michael had loved her. "I didn't understand my relationship with him. It has taken until now to come to have all this love again and understanding for him. I don't know why it had to take all that to have this happen. That upsets me a bit. I was very angry. I was so angry... I felt that we were so united, and then at some point he pushed me out."
Lisa also admitted that she was shocked people ever thought their marriage was not a real deal. "To some degree, he was a master at manipulating the media," Lisa explained. "I understand that nobody really knew who I was. They just assumed I was going along with something he would be doing... I understand it better now. The manipulation was a survival tactic for him."
From her wedding ceremony in 1994, Lisa revealed that Michael always urged her to have a baby. "I did want to, but I just wanted to make sure. I was looking into the future and thinking, 'I don't ever want to get into a custody battle with him'," she recalled. "We would have three-day arguments, taking a break to eat or sleep," she continued, adding that Michael "really tried" to make their relationship work at times but she "didn't appreciate it then."
Two months after her divorce from Michael was finalized in 1996, she learned that Debbie Rowe was expecting his child, calling it a "retaliatory" act. "He would tell me, 'Debbie said she'll do it.' That's how he knew to handle it, 'If you're not going to do it, this person will'," Lisa recalled.
Admitting that their last "coherently good" conversation was in 2005, Lisa shared, "I was very distant... He was asking me, he wanted to tell me that I was right about a lot of people around him. And he asked if I still loved him... I told him I was indifferent and he didn't like that word. He cried."
"And the final part of the conversation was him telling me that someone was going to try and kill him to get a hold of his catalog and estate. And I really didn't know what to do with that," she disclosed. As for Michael's charm for her, Lisa said, "He was like a drug for me. I always wanted to be around him. I never felt like that feeling with another human being except for one - my father."
On Michael's death, on June 25, 2009, Lisa told Oprah that she was crying all day for no reason. Her tears stopped when she got a text message from John Travolta. Lisa recalled, "Actually, John Travolta was one of the first texts I got, asking, 'Are you all right?' "
Lisa Marie Talks About Michael Jackson:
