When Willow Smith was just 11 years old, she posted a heartfelt letter to the late Tupac Shakur, which she claimed to have penned “years” earlier, begging the rapper to return and make her mother, Jada Pinkett-Smith, happy.
The Whip My Hair singer strongly implied that her mom hadn’t gotten over Tupac’s death, who died from gunshot wounds in a Las Vegas drive-by shooting on September 13, 1996 — but it was no secret that the All Eyez On Me chart-topper shared a close bond with Jada long before his untimely death.
The two had formed a friendship after attending the Baltimore School for the Arts in Maryland together in the mid-'80s, long before both celebrities would become household names in their respective fields: Jada had a booming acting career by the ‘90s while Tupac quickly arose as one of the biggest rappers in Hip-Hop.
Why Did Willow Smith Pen A Letter To Tupac?
Back in 2012, Willow posted and deleted a screenshot of the letter she had written years before publishing it on the social media platform, begging Tupac to return so that her mother could be happy again.
She wrote: "Dear Tupac, I know you are alive someplace. I think that my mommy misses you. Can you come back so mommy and me can be happy! I wish you were here… I really do! Love, Willow.”
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Fans were taken aback by the letter, particularly since Jada has always denied having shared a relationship with Tupac, but Willow’s message appeared to indicate otherwise. Still, the Red Table Talk host stands by her claims that there was nothing but a close bond between the two.
In an interview on The Howard Stern Show, Jada told the radio personality that while she and the Hit Em Up hitmaker were very close friends during their teenage years, they both lacked physical chemistry to be anything more than that.
"When you have two young people that have very strong feelings, but there was no physical chemistry between us at all, and it wasn’t even just for me. It was him too," she expressed to Stern back in 2015.
"There was a time when I was like, 'Just kiss me! Let’s just see how this goes'. And when I tell you it had to be the most disgusting kiss for us both. The only way I can put it is, the higher power just did not want that.”
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Jada had previously revealed that when she first met Tupac, she didn’t think much of him based on his appearance, explaining that he “wasn’t necessarily the type of cat that I would even like, deal with.”
But soon after their first encounter, the Matrix star said that their chemistry was “like a magnet.” People would have never thought how intellectual he was if they were to judge him by his looks, the mother-of-two gushed.
It was that first conversation at their school that changed the initial perspective she had about Tupac, recalling how their friendship seemed unbreakable at the time; they both supported one another with their aspiring careers while Pac was said to have been very protective over Jada, who the rap superstar eventually deemed family to him.
“Once you paid attention to him he kind of sucked you in. And we hit it off from that moment on… I don’t think either one of us thought we would have made it in the way that we did, but we knew we were gonna do something.”
She concluded, saying: ”[Shakur] was one of my best friends, he was like a brother.”
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During her interview with Howard Stern, Jada further mentioned that it took her time to understand what and why her friendship with Tupac was so special to her.
The Baltimore native expressed that while they bath shared strong feelings for one another, their chemistry never transcended to anything more than that — there was a strong connection between her and Tupac that she’s never been able to recreate with any man that’s entered her life.
She further told Stern that she thinks about her former pal “every single day.”
Jada has been married to movie star Will Smith since 1997, In July 2020, she confessed in an episode of Red Table Talk that the pair were on the verge of divorcing when she shared an “entanglement” with R&B singer August Alsina.
Their short-lived affair has since come to an end as the couple claimed to have worked out their marital problems since the affair. Alsina, who claimed that Will gave him his blessing to commence a relationship with Jada, has since cut all ties the family.
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