The meeting, the hug, and the missing photo: Why Prabhu Deva’s most prized memory of Michael Jackson exists only in his mind | Tamil News
4 min readHyderabadApr 26, 2026 01:50 PM IST For Prabhu Deva, it started with a VCR hired for an evening and a cassette of Thriller. He was in the middle of his Bharatanatyam training when he first encountered Michael Jackson, and the collision of those two worlds, classical Indian dance and the most electric performer the West had ever produced, set the course of his entire career. “Those days, cassette deck wasn’t easily available,” he recalled, adding, “We used to hire VCR to watch films. One day, I watched ‘The Thriller’. It changed me forever.” The impact was immediate and total, recalled Prabhu Deva in an old interview with O2 India. “I wondered, ‘Who is this guy with such a unique style!’ I had never seen anyone dancing like that. The whole world was mesmerized. I wasn’t an exception.” The morning after, the consequences arrived in the dance studio. “While practicing Bharatanatyam, I started performing steps of Michael Jackson. My Guru scolded me, ‘Have you gone mad?’” When Prabhu Deva explained what he had seen, …
