SANTA MARIA, Calif. — Michael Jackson's ex-wife and the mother of his children revealed Wednesday that she lied about Jackson's parenting skills during a nine-hour taped interview in which she spoke adoringly of the King of Pop.

Jurors and courtroom watchers appeared to be on the edge of their seats, anticipating bombshell testimony from witness Deborah Rowe, when the judge, a stickler for a tight schedule, announced that court was done for the day.

But not before Rowe told jurors that she also lied about her personal life.

"My personal life is my personal life and no one's business," she began to explain. "It pretty much doesn't matter. I could call something black and the press will call it white."

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Choking back tears, Rowe described the brief conversation she had with her ex-husband in February 2003, which led to her participation in the laudatory interviews.

Jackson, she said, asked for her help in rebutting a damaging documentary, "Living with Michael Jackson," in which British journalist Martin Bashir painted the singer as an eccentric and possible pedophile.

"He told me there was a video coming out and it was full of lies and would I help. I said, as always, 'Yes,'" Rowe testified, adding that the last time she heard Jackson's voice was October 1999, the day they signed their divorce papers.

Rowe is currently involved in a custody battle with Jackson and said she has not seen her two children in three years.

"I asked him how he was, and how the children were. I asked him if I could see them when everything settled down," Rowe testified.

"What did he tell you?" prosecutor Ronald Zonen asked.

"He said, 'Yes.'"

Prosecutors contend that Jackson and his aides used Rowe's children as pawns, just as they used Jackson's 13-year-old accuser and his siblings as pawns in a campaign of intimidation and threats against their mother.

The accuser's mother testified that she also engaged in a "highly scripted" rebuttal interview because she feared for her children's safety.

Rowe, however, denied hewing to a script and even refused to look at the proposed questions before filming.

"As Mr. Jackson knows, no one can tell me what to say," Rowe said, effectively skewering the prosecution's previous claims that she was told what to say in the film.

The witness, a strong-jawed blonde who likes to ride Harley-Davidsons, was direct but sorrowful during her 40 minutes on the stand.

She identified herself to the court as Deborah Rowe Jackson, but preferred to be called "Miss Rowe." She testified that she was married to Jackson from about 1997 until their divorce in 1999.

Jackson has custody of their two children, Prince Michael Joseph Jackson Jr., and Paris Michael Katherine, now 8 and 7, respectively.

She said she met Jackson through her former employer, Dr. Arnold Klein, a skin doctor to the stars.

The couple never shared a home, even while married, and upon their divorce, she was allowed to visit Paris and Prince every 45 days for just eight hours.

The visits, Rowe said, took place at austere hotels, with germ-obsessed nannies watching.

"The visitations were not comfortable," Rowe said. "I'd bring fingerpaints — the nanny was always concerned about the children getting dirty. The environment was very sterile."

Regret was evident in her voice when she said she ultimately gave up custody and the visits ended in 2001.

"Why did you agree to do the interview?" Zonen asked.

"I promised him that I would always be there for him and the children," Rowe replied.

When asked again if she had any expectations in exchange for her videotaped testimonial, she replied simply, "To be reintroduced to the children and to be reacquainted with their dad."

"You wanted to be reacquainted with Mr. Jackson again?" Zonen asked.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"He's my friend," Rowe said, a slight lilt in her voice.

Jackson sat silently at the defense table, appearing frail.

Photographer's charity

Jackson is charged with 10 counts, including sexually molesting the accuser, plying the boy with alcohol, and conspiring to falsely imprison him and his family at Neverland ranch.

The accuser's mother claims she was under such duress that she was literally acting to save her family's life when she gave an effusive interview about Jackson in her taped rebuttal.

The mother previously testified that, despite her seemingly spontaneous demeanor on film, every question and answer, every giggle, every superlative she uttered about the singer was fed to her by Jackson's aide, alleged co-conspirator Dieter Weisner.

Coached by the unindicted Weisner, the mother claimed she spent hours memorizing her lines for fear that her family, her elderly parents, and her boyfriend would be killed.

On Wednesday, the man hired to film the rebuttal, testified he saw no evidence of coaching.

"During the two to three hours that the children were at your home, prior to the filming of the interviews, you never saw them memorizing lines, did you?" asked defense attorney Thomas Mesereau.

"No," said Hamid Moslehi, Jackson's former personal director of photography. Moslehi said the children were playing video games, and the mother was in the bathroom applying make-up.

"You didn't watch [the mother] memorizing words, did you?" Mesereau continued.

"No, I didn't," Moslehi replied.

The soft-spoken witness said he was touched by the mother's recounting — during a phone conversation the night before and during the interviews — of her family's life of poverty, desperation and abuse. He gave her a check for $2,000.

Mesereau suggested that Moslehi was just another in a series of the mother's unwitting dupes.

Moslehi smiled awkwardly as he responded that, no, the mother did not reveal that the family had received money from fundraisers for her son, that comedian Louise Palanker gave the family $20,000, and that actor Chris Tucker gave her $2,000. Nor had she mentioned to him a $152,000 settlement from JCPenney.

Would he still have given her money if he had known she was living with a boyfriend who earned $80,000 a year? Mesereau asked.

"I don't know," Moslehi said. "At the time, my state of mind was different. Today? Probably not."