Meg ryan and mum susan Jordan
When Janet Jackson, 52, received the prestigious “icon” honour at this week’s Billboard Music Awards, there was one notable member of the family absent. Her niece Paris, 20, revealed that not only was she not invited to the event but that she wasn’t even told anything about it.
“No one from my management reached out to me about attending the Billboards or about the award and no one from my family did either,” she wrote on Instagram. “I had absolutely no idea.”
She also took the opportunity to go public about her family issues. “Dear social media followers, friends, stalkers, lovers and haters, and fellow moonwalkers: Please do not tell me/demand/try to control how I handle my relationship with the people in my life, specifically my family,” she wrote. “As amazing and as s **** y as things can be, it is no one’s business but ours. I understand that some of you feel some sort of connection or need to be a part of our lives considering you watched us grow up. However, I am handling my situation exactly how my father did. Every family has their moments of trauma, heartbreak, separation, love, oneness, tribe, pain, everything. My family, specifically, and a good number of others… Ours are just made public.” The Sleepless In Seattle star, 56, has never forgiven her mother Susan Ryan Jordan for leaving her and father Harry in 1976 when she was 15 years old. It wasn’t until 1989 that the animosity became public, however, when Susan accused Meg’s then partner Dennis Quaid of taking drugs. The actress retaliated by not inviting her to their 1991 wedding. Susan then publicly scolded her daughter for having an affair with Russell Crowe, telling a magazine: “It’s a painful business to be estranged from your child. There isn’t a day goes by that I don’t think of Peggy and miss her.”
The two haven’t spoken since and according to reports the rift is so irreconcilable that Susan has even been denied access to her grandson Jack, 26, and granddaughter Daisy True, 13, who the actress adopted in 2006. In response she has described her daughter as “a coldhearted manipulator who revels in her power to hurt me”. Drew, 43, did not have the most conventional childhood. A star in ET aged seven, she started smoking aged nine, drinking at 11, taking cocaine aged 13 and by 14 was in and out of rehab before her mother committed her to 18 months in an institution for the mentally ill. It seems Drew never forgave her. The following year she became legally emancipated from her parents and although she later reconciled with her father before his death in 2004, she and Jaid, 72, remain estranged.
“My relationship with my mom is so complicated,” she said in 2014. “I’ve always felt guilt and empathy and utter sensitivity. But we can’t really be in each other’s lives at this point.”