After meeting as teenagers at the Baltimore School for the Arts, Jada Pinkett Smith and Tupac Shakur struck up a close friendship that would last until his untimely death in 1996.
The actress has discussed her relationship with Shakur many times over the years, with her stories always dividing fans of the late rapper.
The 52-year-old appeared on the Jay Shetty Podcast on October 16, where she recalled a time that she and Shakur tried to figure out if they were attracted to each other.
"We were both really young," she said. "There was no physical chemistry between us. I mean, literally.
"It was the same for Pac. When I dared him to kiss me, it was like ew for us both, right.
"It's like, how can that be? How can you feel so connected to someone of the opposite sex.
"There was just this beautiful understanding," she continued. "You know when you can just sit with somebody in the room, you don't have to say a word."
The sweet story melted viewers' hearts on YouTube, where the interview received almost 450,000 views. However, other snippets from her memoir Worthy—released on October 17—have not gone down so well with fans.
During an episode of the All The Smoke podcast on October 13, Pinkett Smith claimed that Shakur proposed to her while serving time in Riker's Island. However, not everyone was convinced, with TikTok user Jess in Miami (@jesstheprequeldoesmiami) doing a deep dive on why she believes the proposal story is false.
Shakur was convicted of sexual assault in 1995 and sentenced to between one and five years in jail. Although the star was sent to Riker's Island in January, he was transferred to Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, after a few weeks.
"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 said, referencing Shakur's then-fiancé Keisha Morris, whom the music icon wed while serving time.
Shakur's time at Riker's Island also roughly lined up with when the actress began dating her future husband Will Smith.
The couple met when Pinkett Smith auditioned for a part on the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in 1994. She didn't land the role, but the pair reconnected in 1995, shortly after Smith split from his then-wife Sheree Zampino.
The 'Summertime' hitmaker asked Pinkett Smith for a date in February 1995, with the Nutty Professor star flying from Maryland to Los Angeles to be with him.
"Jada, when in all that time, did you visit Tupac in Rikers and get this f****** proposal?" Jess asked.
Since being shared on October 16, Jess's has been video 2.8 million times.
Her memories of Shakur are not the only titbits from Worthy to take over the internet. On October 11, the A Different World actress was labeled "toxic" online, after revealing that she and Smith have been secretly separated since 2016, while her claims that Chris Rock asked her on a date brought "new meaning" to the infamous Oscar's slap in 2022.
Newsweek has reached out to Jada Pinkett Smith for comment via email.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Sophie is a Newsweek Pop Culture and Entertainment Reporter based in Lincoln, UK. Her focus is reporting on film and ... Read more
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