Jada Pinkett Smith Accused of 'Lying' About Tupac

With the release of upcoming her memoir Worthy on October 17, Jada Pinkett Smith has been sharing snippets for fans to get sink their teeth into.

One such titbit includes a big revelation about Tupac Shakur, with the 52-year-old actress claiming the rapper proposed to her in in 1995. Describing the legendary artist as her "soulmate," Smith said Shakur popped the question while imprisoned on Rikers Island.

However, a fan claims that the Nutty Professor star is lying, sharing the reasons why in a TikTok video. She later told Newsweek what drove her to make the video, using some choice words to criticize Pinkett Smith.

"Jada's lying and I have the timeline to prove it," user Jess in Miami (@jesstheprequeldoesmiami) said in the clip. "I can't handle these f****** lies anymore."

Newsweek has reached out to Jada Pinkett Smith for comment via email.

The 'Math Isn't Mathing'

Claiming that the "math isn't mathing," Jess begins with Shakur's conviction for sexual assault in 1995. Shakur was found guilty of raping fan Ayanna Jackson and sentenced to 1.5 to 4.5 years in jail. However, he only served nine months, with Death Row Records mogul Suge Knight bailing him out in October 1995.

Shakur spent his first month at Rikers Island, before being moved to Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York. Jess believes that Pinkett Smith wouldn't have had time to visit Shakur at Rikers, due to his short stay at the prison.

"She specifically said she went to see him, this was not on the phone," Jess said, before cutting to a clip of Smith discussing the proposal during an episode of the All The Smoke podcast.

Jess then highlights Shakur's short-lived marriage to ex-wife Keisha Morris. The pair were dating prior to the rapper's conviction and wed in April 1995, while he was serving time. Although it was annulled 10 months later, Morris and Shakur stayed good friends until his death in 1996.

"Tupac already had a girlfriend named Keisha," Jess continued. "He proposed to Keisha—her words in a September 2011 interview—he proposed to Keisha before he even went into prison, they were already engaged. They got married in April."

After Shakur relocated to Clinton Correctional Facility, Morris moved to be closer to him and visited almost daily.

"So you're telling me that in the two to four week window that he was at Rikers, engaged to another woman, who had moved closer to the prison and was there almost every day, Tupac proposed to Jada?" Jess asked.

"You might be saying to yourself 'Tupac wasn't known to be a one-woman man, he was no angel.' Fair enough," she added.

"Let's see where Jada was in January of 1995, which we have established is the only time she'd be able to see Tupac at Rikers, Jada had already met Will Smith in 1994."

Pinkett Smith met her future husband Will Smith in 1994 while auditioning for a role on his sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. However, the rapper was married at the time, so the couple didn't begin dating until the following year.

Jess shares a snippet of a previous interview, in which Smith recounts calling the A Different World star for a date in February 1995—five days after his wife Sheree Zambino served him with divorce papers.

After the call, Pinkett Smith got a plane from her home in Maryland to Los Angeles, where the pair began a whirlwind romance, tying the knot in 1997.

"Jada, when in all that time, did you visit Tupac in Rikers and get this f****** proposal?" Jess asked.

Jess' digging divided followers, with TikToker factcheckingtheflerfs commenting: "Damn.. you came with receipts..."

"Coming with the FACTS AND I'M HERE FOR IT!" agreed JC.

"Is Jada obsessed with Tupac?" asked eloquentheartwriter.

"Nearly every interview she constantly mentions him and her!!" wrote Caroline Ní Roideacháin, while ExistentialEnnu said: "This is everything I needed thank you."

However, others defended Pinkett Smith, with Kai writing: "I think its crazy that yall blantly ignoring all the red flags about tupac to hate on jada [and] saying she the toeup one."

'Insensitive, Attention-Seeking'

Jess told Newsweek that she decided to deep-dive into the proposal reveal due to her love of both Shakur and Smith's music.

"I was a teen in the late 80's/early 90's. 'He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper' by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince was one of the first albums I ever owned," she said.

"Tupac hit the mainstream in the early 90's and I was instantly hooked on his music. Both of these men were prevalent fixtures in the lexicon of '90's pop culture and are staples in the memories of my generation.

"When I heard Jada's story about Tupac's proposal, it rung something in the back of my head because I remember thinking, 'Wasn't she with Will at this time?'—so I did a deep dive."

Jess is concerned that Pinkett Smith is trying to make her husband look bad, as well as portraying herself as a "savior" to Shakur.

"Tupac's own prison letters state that Jada is the one who proposed to him, but he saw her as a friend," Jess said.

"And while only Jada and Tupac can truly only know what happened between them, the way she is lapping up the praise and attention her current media tour has been getting from those who interview her—it seems like she only wants praise and attention right now.

"She doesn't seem to be giving any thought to how she is painting the father of her children, her former husband of decades. It comes off as insensitive, attention-seeking, and praise-hungry."

Pinkett Smith and Shakur met as teenagers while attending the Baltimore School for the Arts in the 1980s. In a 2015, Pinkett Smith told Howard Stern that she and Shakur were not attracted to each other but had a very close friendship, with the rapper even writing her a poem at one point.

In an interview with Hota Kotb ahead of her upcoming NBC primetime special, Pinkett Smith confessed that she and Smith have been separated since 2016, but are still legally married. The former couple share son Jaden Smith, 25, and daughter Willow Smith, 22.

Update 10/18/23, 07:56 a.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from Jess in Miami (@jesstheprequeldoesmiami).