When the announcement first came that Jaafar Jackson — Michael’s nephew, the son of Jermaine, a young man who carries the family name and the family resemblance and, as it turns out, a remarkable portion of the family talent — would be stepping into the role of the most famous entertainer who ever lived in the long-awaited Michael Jackson biopic, the reaction from the global fanbase that has never stopped loving the King of Pop was the particular mixture of protective anxiety and cautious hope that greets any attempt to put one of the most singular and most scrutinized human beings in the history of popular culture back on screen.

The question that has been hanging over the production since that announcement — whether Jaafar Jackson could truly inhabit the full complexity of his uncle, whether someone who grew up inside the Jackson family had the distance necessary to portray its most extraordinary and most complicated member honestly, and whether the film was going to tell the real story or the comfortable one — has been the subject of speculation across every fan forum and entertainment outlet since the project was confirmed. What Jaafar has just confirmed about the biopic — about what the film is actually going to show, about the approach he has taken to a role that no amount of preparation could fully make anyone ready for, and about the specific and deeply personal decision he made about how to honor his uncle’s legacy without sanitizing the humanity that made Michael Jackson’s story the most fascinating and most unresolved in all of popular music — has the entire world talking for exactly the reason the best confirmations always do: because it was not what anyone expected to hear.