Jada Pinkett Smith recently reflected on her rocky road to Hollywood and relationship with Tupac Shakur.
On Sway’s Universe on Wednesday, the Girls Trip actress revealed that at the time she met the rapper, she was a drug dealer.
“It’s kinda hard because I haven’t really told the whole story,” the 45-year-old actress shared. “One of the things that’s very interesting that I’ve never really said before is that when I first met Pac, when we first met, I was a drug dealer. Yes.”
Without going into further detail, Pinkett Smith expressed deep regret that the slain rapper never had the opportunity to make it off the streets. “Something very bad happened to me,” she said without elaborating. “As I was coming out of the life, he was going more into the life. And so I’ve been having kind of an existential crisis around Pac. … There was a point in which we met and then we kind of were going our separate ways. And I just felt like, ‘OK, God one day you’re going to do for Pac what you did for me, which is you saved me.’ And that just never happened for him. And that is something that I am constantly having to confront.”
Meanwhile, Will Smith’s better half went on to clear up all those romance rumors, admitting that she and Pac’s relationship was one based on “survival.”
“Pac and I’s relationship was about survival. That’s how it started,” explained Pinkett Smith. “And I know that most people wanna always connect us in this romance thing, but that’s just because they don’t have the story.
“I just decided that one little piece was important to share because it gives more insight to who we were that it wasn’t just about, ‘You have this cute girl and this cool guy they must have been in this romance.’ .It wasn’t that at all. It was about survival. … And holding each other down in ways that only he and I could hold each other down.”
It’s no secret that Pinkett Smith hasn’t been too thrilled with the depiction of her relationship with Pac over the years. Most recently, following the release of Shakur’s biopic All Eyez On Me, the 45-year-old claimed it was “deeply hurtful” the way the film misrepresented their bond.
“What you’re seeing in regards to my relationship with Tupac is not true. My relationship with Pac would have shown people what he truly was. ‘Cause it’s one thing to see Pac’s persona, publicly, and who he was personally,” she said during an interview with Atlanta radio station V-103.
Of the producers, she said: “I thought it was just handled in a very disrespectful way, and I felt like it was exploitative of me and Pac, how they used our relationship to sell a movie, and I just felt like it was tomb-raiding in regards to Pac.”
