Jackson Impersonation Fits Actor Like a Glove

The man about to become America’s most-watched Michael Jackson impersonator grew up scared of the legend.

Yet people kept telling him that he reminded them of Jackson. (“Little Mikey,” a waitress called him.) So he powdered his face and won a costume contest at 17.

He threw a turned-up fedora next to Jackson’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and danced for spare change. He performed at the Hollywood Wax Museum. He played high school halftime shows and birthday parties. Then he made the Jay Leno show. Then a cable series. Then a movie role.

And finally Monday, wearing the garish white makeup that has been his second skin for nearly a decade, 27-year-old Edward Moss was sitting at the defense table in a Mid-Wilshire television studio that had been converted into a mock courtroom. In the subculture of Michael Jackson impersonators, this was the role of a lifetime: playing Michael in E! Entertainment Television’s nightly half-hour reenactment of the Jackson child-molestation trial.

News cameras and microphones have been banned from the Santa Maria, Calif., courtroom where Jackson faces 10 felony counts stemming from the alleged molestation of a 13-year-old boy at his Neverland ranch.

So E! and a British TV partner have created an exhausting process to bring the day’s highlights to viewers.

After both sides made opening statements Monday, E! producers grabbed transcripts of the day’s court session and began culling about 15 minutes of the most compelling exchanges. In addition to Moss, actors had been cast to play Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville, the lawyers and some of the celebrity witnesses that Jackson’s attorneys may call.

This morning, a team of legal analysts will tape about eight minutes of commentary on Monday’s proceedings. That analysis will be blended with Monday’s reenactment and broadcast tonight at 7:30 and 9. While that is happening, producers will already be wrapping up taping the reenactment of today’s court action for broadcast Wednesday. The reenactments will be shown Monday through Friday, with a one-hour wrap-up show broadcast Saturdays at 10 a.m.

Ted Harbert, president of E! Entertainment, pledged that the show would remain faithful to courtroom testimony and said E! would have a “courtroom observer” in Santa Maria who would convey details on “style, mannerism and tone” of trial participants to the producer in Los Angeles.

Which is where life may get tricky for Edward Moss.

Moss, who stands 6 feet 2 with a lanky, athletic build, has made a living copying Jackson’s vaunted physicality. But in a case in which the defendant is not expected to testify, what is there for this impersonator to do but sit still or take occasional glances at a witness? Frequent camera cuts to “Jackson” will be irresistible and expected by the audience, but what in Moss’ career has prepared him for this?

Confident and effusive, Moss said he wasn’t worried. “I’ve learned his mannerisms,” he said. “I know by looking at him when he’s nervous or happy. It’s like researching any other character. I’m good at it.”

Ask Moss if he’s ever acted and he seems good-naturedly taken aback. “I’ve done over 80 TV shows and three movies and music videos -- that’s acting.”

The fact that those were all small Jackson portrayals does not faze him. His manager, Dan Gore, who has known Moss most of his career, characterized his client as being several cuts above most Jackson look-alikes.

The idea of reenacting the trial came from across the Atlantic.

Harbert said he was attending a television sales conference in France last fall when a representative of Sky TV in Britain told him that the network was thinking of doing a Jackson reenactment similar to one the network had broadcast to cover a 2003 British government inquest.

In auditioning actors to portray Jackson, E! was influenced by Moss’ recent career spike: In 2003, he played a Jackson impersonator in the edgy FX series “Nip/Tuck.” (He says he has had no facial enhancement surgery.) Moss appeared as Jackson in “Scary Movie 3”: Charlie Sheen took the white veil off his oddly acting daughter, only to find a shrieking Jackson.

When Moss was little, Michael made him shriek.

He was 5 years old when Jackson became the world’s hottest entertainer with his “Thriller” album and music video, in which Jackson turned into a werewolf.

“I didn’t want anything to do with him,” Moss said. “My mom would be like, ‘Oh, Michael Jackson!’ and I’m like, ‘Scary man!’ ”

Born in Hollywood and a student at Hollywood High, Moss said he was working at a local McDonald’s in 1996 when the manager threw a costume contest, offering $200 to the winner. “So I dress as Michael -- I wear gray jeans and I smear paint and powder on my face. That’s how it started. I won the contest.”

He says he never felt like a Jackson fan, but was eventually captivated by Jackson’s talent as an entertainer.

Gore, who said he had bad experiences with other unstable Jackson imitators, said he was impressed by Moss’ level-headedness. “Eddie was normal.”

By 1999, Moss made his first of several appearances on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.” He also made public appearances.

Within the Jackson impersonator ranks, there is a suspicion that Moss has crossed the line between honoring Jackson and exploiting his bad press. Joby Rogers, a Connecticut impersonator, says he wouldn’t have taken the “Scary Movie” part, and says he has also turned down offers to appear as Jackson wearing handcuffs.

“I don’t think Michael needs any more problems,” Rogers said.

Said Moss: “I don’t think I’ve ever done anything that was in bad taste. There are a lot of [impersonators] who think they have a connection to Michael.... This is my job. It’s what I do .... When I go home, I’m Eddie at the end of the day.”