Jada Pinkett Smith was supposed to appear in the iconic 90’s movie Dead Presidents, alongside Larenz Tate, but passed on the role due to her friendship with her late friend, Tupac Shakur.
Tate actually first spilled the beans during a sitdown with HipHollywood. Tate claimed Pinkett Smith was tapped to be his co-star but turned it down because Shakur did not like the film’s directors Albert and Allen Hughes (the Hughes brothers.)
“We’re on set in New Orleans talking about that experience. I said, ‘I talked to the Hughes brothers and you were supposed to be in the movie.’ And she says ‘I was.’ She was like, ‘I couldn’t do it because, at the time, I was really close with Tupac and Tupac had this beef with the Hughes brothers’,” he explained.
“She had a good relationship with Tupac and she didn’t want to get in the middle of it. She thought if she had done that movie, it would’ve been a little weird.”
Shakur was fired from the set of the Hughes brothers movie, Menace II Society, for being disruptive on set. Allen Hughes and Shakur’s argument turned physical, and the rapper was charged with assault and battery over the incident.
In 2017, Pinkett Smith opened up about her “complex” relationship with Pac.
“Him feeling like, ‘You’re the only stability I got. I can’t afford for you to put that attention elsewhere. I need that stability.’ So for him, it was… we were an anchor for each other. So any time he felt like that anchor was threatened… oh my god,” she explained.
