When Michael — the long-awaited biopic chronicling the life and legacy of the King of Pop — finally hit theaters on April 24, 2026, it didn’t just arrive. It landed like a moonwalk. Directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Michael Jackson’s real-life nephew Jaafar Jackson in his acting debut, the Lionsgate film traces Jackson’s extraordinary journey from his earliest days fronting the Jackson 5 to his rise as the most iconic entertainer the world has ever known. The film has since become a cultural phenomenon, shattering box office records with a $97 million domestic opening weekend and over $219 million worldwide — the biggest opening in history for any biopic, surpassing Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer domestically and Bohemian Rhapsody globally on the music biopic front.
Among the film’s standout performances is Larenz Tate, who steps into the shoes of Motown legend Barry Gordy — the visionary founder of Motown Records whose belief in a young Michael Jackson helped launch one of music’s most extraordinary careers. It’s a role that carries particular resonance for Tate, who himself entered the entertainment industry at a young age and has spent decades building one of Hollywood’s most respected careers. And it’s not his first time inhabiting music royalty on screen — Tate previously portrayed Frankie Lyman in Why Do Fools Fall in Love and Quincy Jones in Get On Up, making him uniquely positioned among actors who have portrayed figures directly woven into Michael Jackson’s story.
I sat down with Larenz Tate to talk about what it meant to play Barry Gordy, the parallels between his own early career and the young Michael’s journey, and why — if he had just 24 hours and one song — Human Nature would be on repeat all day.