Jada Pinkett Smith is once again recounting details from her intimate friendship with Tupac Shakur.
The “Set It Off” actor has often regaled the public with stories of her longtime bond with the late rapper. This week, after confirming that she has been separated from actor Will Smith since 2016, she’s going even further — calling Shakur, who died in 1996, her “soulmate.”
“If there is such a thing as past lives, I definitely think Pac and I have traveled a few together, in various forms,” she told the website Rolling Out in an interview Thursday. Asked if she ever regretted not taking things to the next level, she responded, “It just wasn’t possible.”
When reminded that Shakur once referred to her as his “soulmate,” Pinkett Smith said she “absolutely” felt the same way. She noted that soulmates don’t necessarily have to be connected through physical romance, however, and that she had “friendship-love chemistry” with Shakur.
“It was almost like God made us that way,” Pinkett Smith told the outlet. “It was like, ‘Look, we’ll put y’all together. Y’all gonna be a dynamic duo, but I’mma tell you right now — I’mma make it so y’all not gonna be able to get together.’ ’Cause that just wasn’t the purpose.”
It’s well documented that Shakur and Pinkett Smith became fast friends after meeting as teenagers at the Baltimore School for the Arts in Maryland in the 1980s. While they remained close throughout their careers, Pinkett Smith said “there was no chemistry” between them.
Shakur’s own poems have long suggested as much, as the late rapper once wrote: “U bring me 2 climax without sex / And u do it all with regal grace / U r my heart in Human Form / A Friend I could never replace.” The pair purportedly came quite close to marriage, however.
“When he asked me to get married, he was at Rikers,” Pinkett Smith told Showtime in an upcoming interview. “And I knew at that time that A., he needed somebody to do time with him — which I was gonna do anyway. You ain’t have to marry me to do time. I’m here.”
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Shakur was sentenced in 1995 to 1.5 to 4.5 years in prison for sexually abusing a fan and served a portion of his time at Rikers Island in New York. Pinkett Smith recalled to Showtime that “he was in bad shape” and “having to leave him there” after visiting was painful.
Pinkett Smith has long celebrated her bond with Shakur on social media, leaving some fans concerned about her husband’s feelings long before her separation with Smith became public.
The “Bad Boys” star was candid on “The Breakfast Club” in 2020 when asked if he was jealous of Pinkett Smith’s bond with Shakur, answering, “Oh fuck yeah. That was in the early days, and that was a big regret for me too, ’cause I could never open up to or interact with Pac.”
He added: “They grew up together and they loved each other. They never had a sexual relationship but had come into that age where now that was a possibility, and then Jada was with me … But she just loved him. He was the image of perfection.”
Shakur was ultimately gunned down in Las Vegas in September 1996. Pinkett Smith tied the knot with her husband the following year and they have two children together. She’s expected to address her separation, the infamous Oscars slap and more in her upcoming memoir.
“Worthy” hits shelves Oct. 17.