Jada Pinkett Smith and Tupac Had an “Inseparable” Bond of Survival and Success

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Among the many topics in her forthcoming memoir, actor Jada Pinkett Smith plans to delve into her famous friendship with rapper Tupac Shakur. The book, titled Worthy and releasing on October 17, offers a “no holds barred” view of her life, including her acting career, complicated family history, and her famous and often controversial marriage to actor Will Smith.

Tupac was one of Pinkett Smith’s oldest friends. The two met while attending school together in Baltimore and remained so close that, although they were never romantically involved, Smith has admitted that he was jealous of the late rapper.

“We had an instant connection,” Pinkett Smith said of Shakur. “We became close friends pretty quickly. We were pretty much inseparable from the day we met.”

Shakur and Pinkett Smith saw a lot of similarities in each other. They both grew up surrounded by drugs and addiction. They were both very intelligent, passionate about their art, and often underestimated by others. And they were in it together, remaining close friends until Shakur’s tragic and untimely death in 1996.

How Tupac and Jada Met

Pinkett Smith and Shakur were both born in 1971. He was raised in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood by his mother, a political activist and Black Panther Party member named Afeni Shakur. She was addicted to crack cocaine during Shakur’s childhood, and the family had to move often, struggling for money and living off welfare because she couldn’t keep a job.

In 1984, the family moved to Baltimore, and Shakur enrolled at the prestigious Baltimore School for the Arts, where he said he was “the freest I ever felt.” It was also where he met Jada Pinkett, who became one of his closest and most trusted friends for the rest of his life.

Her mother had been a heroin addict, and Pinkett herself was a drug dealer when she attended the Baltimore school. She studied dance and theater there, which helped her overcome some of her demons. Shakur was so inspired by her strength and personality that he wrote poems about her, including one in which he called her the “foundation 4 my conception of love,” according to Clifford W. Mills’ biography Tupac Shakur.

Supporting Each Other’s Careers

Pinkett and Shakur consistently supported each other as they pursued their careers over the years. She made a cameo appearance in Shakur’s music video for the song “Strictly 4 My Niggaz,” and Pinkett was cast in her first movie role based upon a suggestion from Shakur.

She portrayed a young single mother named Ronnie in Menace II Society (1993), a film directed by brothers Albert and Allen Hughes. Shakur was originally slated to also appear in the movie but was fired shortly after Pinkett was cast. She considered quitting as a result, but Shakur convinced her to keep the part, and she later said, “I probably wouldn’t have done it without his blessing.”

Pinkett received critical acclaim for the performance, with film critic Roger Ebert describing her performance as “filled with life and conviction.” She never forgot that Shakur helped her secure a foothold in Hollywood, and she later turned down a part in the Hughes brothers’ movie Dead Presidents (1995) because of their past treatment of Shakur.

Shakur was strongly supportive of Pinkett as she continued to achieve success. His friend and Outlawz collaborator Mutah “Napoleon” Wassin Shabazz Beale recalled going with him to see the 1994 movie A Low Down Dirty Shame, which starred Pinkett. “Pac just was staring at the screen paying attention and was very heavily involved in the movie and focused,” Beale said. “He had a lot of love for Jada Pinkett, a lot of respect for her.”

Pinkett also supported Shakur as his rap career took off. She conceived the idea for the music video for his hit song “California Love,” which features the rapper fighting an evil tribal chief in a desert set in the year 2095. The idea was inspired by the 1985 movie Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and Pinkett was originally slated to direct it, but she dropped out of the project, according to the book Tupac Shakur: The Life and Times of an American Icon.

Will Smith Regrets His Jealousy

Despite their extremely close friendship, Shakur and Pinkett were never romantically involved. But that didn’t mean that there wasn’t some jealousy on the part of her famous future husband, Will Smith. He later said he regrets that he never became close with Shakur because he felt so insecure about his wife’s friendship with Tupac.

“He was the image of perfection [to her], but she was with the Fresh Prince,” Smith said. “Even when we were in the room [together] a couple times, I couldn’t speak to him. And he wasn’t going to speak to me if I wasn’t going to speak to him… That was a huge regret of mine. I couldn’t handle it.”

Shakur was so protective of Pinkett that she even worried he might assault Smith, which Beale said offended the rapper. But she recognized that Shakur could have an exaggerated outlook on life due to his extreme lifestyle and his own low self-esteem, according to Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur by Michael Eric Dyson. “He had a way of putting you on a pedestal, and if there was one thing you did wrong, he would swear you were the devil,” she said, according to the book. “Everything about him was extreme.”

Shakur’s Death Made Pinkett Smith “Mad at God”

Shakur died in Las Vegas on September 13, 1996, days after he was shot in a stopped car he was sharing with record executive Suge Knight. Pinkett had plans to fly out to visit him the day of his death, and she was so shocked at the news that her knees buckled, and Smith had to catch her.

Even decades later, Pinkett Smith said on an episode of her talk show Red Table Talk that Tupac’s death so profoundly affects her that it made her “mad at God.”

“That was a huge loss in my life,” she said. “Because he was one of those people, I expected to be here. My upset is more anger, because I feel like he left me. And I know that’s not true, and it’s a very selfish way to think about it, [but] I really did believe he’d be here for the long run.”

More than two decades after Shakur’s death, the biopic All Eyez on Me about him was released in theaters in 2017. The movie depicts not only Shakur’s musical career, but also his difficult childhood, run-ins with the law, and the most important personal relationships in his life.

Demetrius Shipp Jr. portrayer Skakur in the film, while Pinkett Smith was played by Kat Graham. But the real Pinkett Smith wasn’t impressed by what she saw on the big screen, especially what she saw as a sanitized version of Shakur’s life and his friendship with her.

“It wasn’t just about, ‘Oh, you have this cute girl, and this cool guy, they must have been in this—’” Pinkett Smith said of the way the film “reimagined” their relationship together. “Nah, it wasn’t that at all. It was about survival, and it had always been about survival between us.”

With Worthy, Pinkett Smith is sure to set the record straight.

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