It's been nearly 15 years since Macaulay Culkin last saw Michael Jackson in person.
As the former blockbuster child star recalled in a newly published Esquire interview, Cullkin last saw the late pop legend at Jackson's own 2005 criminal trial, in which the performer was acquitted. According to the Home Alone star, the two famed friends crossed paths in the bathroom while Culkin's testimony was in recess.
"We better not talk. I don't want to influence your testimony," Jackson said, spurring a little laughter between the two, according to the interview. The two hugged and Jackson unexpectedly died four years later.
As for the allegations against Jackson, some of which the focus of the 2018 documentary, Leaving Neverland, Culkin maintains that he did not face any of the same alleged sexual abuse from the late star.
"Look," he told Esquire. "I'm gonna begin with the line—it's not a line, it's the truth: He never did anything to me. I never saw him do anything. And especially at this flash point in time, I'd have no reason to hold anything back. The guy has passed on. If anything—I'm not gonna say it would be stylish or anything like that, but right now is a good time to speak up. And if I had something to speak up about, I would totally do it. But no, I never saw anything; he never did anything."
Nowadays, the Golden Globe-nominated actor, who recently dipped his toes back into the movies with Changeland, keeps busy running his lifestyle website and podcast, Bunny Ears, and is apparently on the road to fatherhood.
"We practice a lot," he told the magazine, referring to himself and girlfriend Brenda Song. "We're figuring it out, making the timing work. Because nothing turns you on more than when your lady comes into the room and says, 'Honey, I'm ovulating.'"
At 39, it sounds like the star is content with how his life has turned out so far. ""Look, I mean, it sucks...But: It coulda been worse, you know?" he told the magazine, referencing the hardships of childhood fame and his family troubles. "I wasn't working in a coal mine. I wasn't a child soldier. My father was not sexually abusing me. Certain f&$ked-up things happened, but f#!ked-up things happen to kids all the time and they don't come out the other end. I've got something to show for it, man. I mean, look at me: I got money, I got fame, I got a beautiful girlfriend and a beautiful house and beautiful animals. It took me a long time to get to that place, and I had to have that conversation with myself and go, like, Honestly, Mack? It's not so bad. I want for nothing and need for even less. I'm good, man."
The March issue of Esquire hits newsstands Feb. 18.