Jada Pinkett Smith has revealed that 2Pac asked her to marry him while he was serving time in prison in 1995.
The actress made the claim during an interview with former NBA stars Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson’s All the Smoke podcast as part of the promotional run for her upcoming memoir Worthy (out October 17).
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“When I wrote about that in the book and when I had to talk about it, speak my words for the Audible version of the book, that was probably one of the more painful parts,” she said. “Seeing him there, the condition that he was in and having to leave him there. He was in bad shape. And so, when he asked me to get married, he was at Rikers [Island].
“I knew at that time that he needed somebody to do time with him, which I was gonna do anyway. He didn’t have to marry me to do that. I’m here. He needed a rock. Because of our friendship and everything we had been through together, he just wanted to feel that solidified foundation.”
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She continued: “I promise you, he would’ve married me and divorced me as soon as his ass got out [of prison]. He would’ve! […] I just think it was the mind state that he was in. He wrote me this long letter, and even before ‘Pac went to jail, he was starting to shift in a certain manner. Good, really good.
“And I think that for him, he just felt like, ‘Okay, if I can tether myself, it’ll keep me on a trajectory.’ But trust me, he would’ve divorced me as soon as he — one thing he wouldn’t want me as is a wife. I know that for a fact! But I think just being at Rikers, it just kinda shook him a little.”
Jada Pinkett Smith also opened up about not speaking to 2Pac during the last year of his life due to a heated argument they had.
“I just felt like he was off track a little bit, and I spoke on that and we got into probably one of the most heated arguments we ever had,” she said. “‘Pac and I getting into heated confrontations was not unusual. This happened to be a very heated one, and I didn’t speak to him for a year.
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“I was hurt, I was pissed, and I really kinda dug my heels in the ground. I was just like, ‘He went too far and he’s gon’ have to call me, and I’m standing my ground on it.’ And I learned that, don’t waste time like that. It’s like, a whole year out of my pride. Both of us. Very prideful. Just hard-headed, prideful. ‘Cause none of it mattered.”
She added: “The day [2Pac’s mother] Afeni called me, when I found out he had been shot again, I didn’t give a [fuck]. That whole conversation and whatever was going on with Suge [Knight] and all that, it didn’t matter. So why should it have mattered for a whole year?
“It didn’t matter. And surely once he was gone. So I just learned, man, don’t hold on to bullshit. It’s not worth it. ‘Cause you just never know.”
Jada Pinkett Smith and 2Pac first met as teens at the Baltimore School for the Arts and became fast friends. “As soon as he approached me, he was like a magnet,” she once said. “Once you paid attention to him, he kinda sucked you in — and we hit it off from that moment on.”
She later married Will Smith in 1997 and shares two children with the former Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star.
In his own memoir Will that came out in 2021, Smith opened up about his “raging jealousy” over the close bond that 2Pac shared with his future wife.
“Though they were never intimate, their love for each other is legendary — they defined ‘ride or die,’” he wrote. “In the beginning of our relationship, my mind was tortured by their connection. He was ‘PAC! and I was me.
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“He triggered the perception of myself as a coward. I hated that I wasn’t what he was in the world, and I suffered a raging jealousy: I wanted Jada to look at me like that.”
Smith went on to admit that he felt a “twisted kind of victory” when Jada would spend more time with him than Tupac.
“If she chose me over Tupac, there was no way I could be a coward,” he added. “I was in a room with Tupac on multiple occasions, but I never spoke to him. The way Jada loved ‘Pac rendered me incapable of being friends with him. I was too immature.”
