“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.”
She proceeded and uttered: “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 Reveals Tupac Asked Her to Marry Him.
(🎥: Showtime Basketball / YouTube) pic.twitter.com/FsWFAuzlXK
— The Art Of Dialogue (@ArtOfDialogue_) October 13, 2023
Jada Pinkett Smith also shared about not talking to 2Pac during the last year of his life due to a frenzied altercation 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 expressed. “‘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.
“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, and prideful. ‘Cause none of it mattered.”
She emphasized: “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 sounds like she didn’t talk to 2Pac the last year of his life over a heated argument where she felt like 2Pac went too far.
(🎥: Showtime Basketball / YouTube) pic.twitter.com/8DkNpcFT49
— The Art Of Dialogue (@ArtOfDialogue_) October 13, 2023
Jada Pinkett Smith and 2Pac first met as teenagers at the Baltimore School for the Arts and became tight buddies. “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.”
Fast forward, she took the plunge with Will Smith in 1997 and shares two children with the one-time Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star.
In his memoir Will who came out in 2021, Smith disclosed his “raging jealousy” over the close bond that 2Pac shared with his future missis.
“Though they were never intimate, their love for each other is legendary — they defined ‘ride or die,’” he penned. “At the beginning of our relationship, my mind was tortured by their connection. He was ‘PAC! and I was me.
“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 continued to acknowledge that he felt a “twisted kind of victory” when Jada would spend more time with him than the Death Row rapper.
“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.”
