Howie Mandel Says Jackelyn Shultz Wanted Michael Jackson as Baby Name

howie mandel said his eldest daughter Jackelyn Shultz wanted his unborn son to be named Michael Jackson when she was 4 years old. The request came from a household already fixated on the pop singer, and Mandel later turned the family anecdote into a story about an awkward meeting that followed.

Jackelyn Shultz at 41

At 41, Shultz is now old enough to look back at the episode as a childhood obsession, not just a strange name campaign. Mandel, 70, said the naming plea came when Terry Mandel was pregnant with their son, who is now 36.

“My daughter, who is now 41, and I were obsessed with Michael Jackson. When she was four years old, [she] wanted my son, who's 36, when my wife [Terry] was pregnant with him, she wanted us to name our son Michael Jackson,” Mandel said. That is the core of the story: a child trying to turn a pop idol into a family name.

Michael Jackson meeting

Mandel said he and Terry Mandel took Jackelyn Shultz to meet Michael Jackson later, and the encounter went badly at first. “We took her to meet him one day, and she just couldn't talk, and she was terrified. And he was so sweet and wonderful with her,” Mandel said.

Shultz described the same moment as overwhelming. “He was doing a photo shoot with the monkey [Bubbles], right? Didn't he have animals with him? He was doing a photo shoot,” she said on the Howie Mandel Does Stuff podcast in March. “I saw him. I got so starstruck and so scared. I started crying and hid in the bathroom. And they were trying to take me out.”

Bathroom exit, family punchline

Mandel said he kept trying to get his daughter to come back out. “No, I kept saying, 'Jackie, you gotta come see him, come on. Michael doesn't have a lot of time. Please, Jackie, come on out,'” he said. Jackson then cut through the awkwardness: “And I'll never forget this. He said, 'You're being really mean to your daughter. She's scared. Leave her in the bathroom.'”

Mandel’s joke lands because the family had tried to make Jackson part of the family tree and instead ended up with a bathroom hiding spot. Jackson died in June 2009 at age 50, and the anecdote now reads like a snapshot of the distance between fandom and reality: a child can campaign for the name, but meeting the man is another matter.