Will Smith has shared more details about his true feelings about his wife’s connection with Tupac Shakur in his new memoir “Will.”
In his book, the I Am Legend actor shared how he felt insecure during the early stages of his relationship with Jada Pinkett Smith due to her close friendship with the late rapper. “Though they were never intimate, their love for each other is legendary — they define ‘ride or die,’” he wrote. “In the beginning of our relationship, my mind was tortured by their connection. He was ‘PAC and I was me.”
“‘Pac was like Harry — he triggered the perception of myself as a coward,” Smith wrote. “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.”
The “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” actor added that once he and Jada became more serious, she spent last time with Tupac, becoming a “twisted kind of victory” for him.
“If she chose me over Tupac, there was no way I could be a coward,” he wrote. “I have rarely felt more validated. 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.”
Jada and Tupac met when they were both students at the Baltimore School for the Arts. Although the two remained platonic, the Set It Off actress has always expressed how close she was with the West Coast rapper.
Back in June, Jada shared a never-before-seen poem titled “Lost Soulz” that Pac wrote her while he was incarcerated at Riker’s Island. In honor of what would have been his 50th birthday, the “Red Table Talk” host read the poem aloud in a post to her Instagram page.