Janet Jackson takes control of the rumors in new doc

Nearly 50 years into her career, Janet Jackson is still exhibiting the “Control” that turned her into a cultural icon.

Jackson and her brother Randy executive-produced the two-night, four-part documentary, “Janet Jackson,” which premiered on Lifetime and A&E Friday and Saturday.

“It’s just something that needs to be done,” Jackson, 55, says of the film during the opening scene as she’s being driven through her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Jackson interrupts her own commentary when she notices a mural of five of her brothers on a neighborhood wall and starts to cry.

Considering this illumination of her personal life and career is being orchestrated by one of the most famously private and enigmatic figures in music history – herself – it’s refreshing to see Jackson approach this unveiling with candor.

The grabby headlines are tackled early: the stern guidance of family patriarch Joseph Jackson’s elopement with R&B singer James Debarge and their alleged secret child; her defiance in shunning her father’s management to relaunch her music career; a clandestine marriage to dancer René Elizondo Jr.

And that’s just in the first two hours of “Janet Jackson.”

The second part of the series will dip into child molestation allegations against brother Michael (“Guilty by association,” she says she felt); the scandalous Super Bowl halftime show in 2004 with Justin Timberlake; her late-in-life motherhood; and Michael’s death.

It’s been an exhausting and circuitous road from the 670-square-foot house in Indiana – which housed the nine Jackson siblings and their parents – to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which Jackson entered in 2019.

Between the five years of footage by her documentary crew – enlisted to chronicle her 2017 tour – and the 10 years of previously unseen home videos shot by ex-husband Elizondo, as well as vintage concert and TV performance clips, the visual offerings are intriguing.

Interview clips with siblings Tito and Rebbie and mother Katherine, along with celebrity reflections from Questlove, Whoopi Goldberg, Missy Elliott, Norman Lear and Debbie Allen, among others, occasionally edify. But it’s whenever Jackson fills the screen, a delicate voice under a heap of imposing scarves, that it’s time to straighten up and pay attention.

Here are more highlights from the documentary:

Did Janet Jackson have a baby with James Debarge?

While Jackson and the dulcet-toned Debarge singer were married only a year, tittle-tattle has persisted for decades that Jackson gave birth to a daughter with James, with sister Rebbie recruited as Jackson’s proxy in motherhood.

Jackson’s denial could be construed as oblique. “I could never keep a child from James,” she says, battling emotion. “How could I keep a child away from their father? I could never do that. That’s not right.”

She explains her weight gain at the time was a result of taking birth control, a physical shift that only fueled the gossip.

Rebbie’s reaction is more forthright. “They were saying I was raising her daughter. I don’t know where that ridiculous idea came from.”