"Not only do I think that he is highly intelligent but also outstandingly educated. ... He is extremely beautiful, fragile and totally unearthly. I always had the feeling that he is not standing on the floor but slightly floating on air. Michael Jackson knows that he appears like that on others and he also knows how to employ it."

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What helped me get the part was that I turned it down. When I read the script, Venus was just a black guy who came in wearing a big coat and a hat and making jive talk. I'd been up for so many of those! I'd had enough of caricatures, what white writers conceive blacks to be. I told the producer I wasn't interested in doing anything like that for three or four years. He said that it was just a pilot, that Venus would be given a human dimension and would be quiet off-the-air. I wanted that input. I thought that side was as important as the comic side. For 'WKRP,' too much of either would be bad.

— Tim Reid