Jada Pinkett Smith went on Howard Stern this week and most of the coverage has been about what she said about her marriage and the word “open”. She said she’s not his “watcher”. That she trusts him. That they have a great relationship. And, yeah, he’s attracted to other women but he loves her and he’s mature. Whatever. Other women has never been the real gossip with the Smiths. And besides, this is not what interested me about the interview. What was most interesting about the interview was when she talked about Tupac.
Jada and Tupac were really close. Jada confirms that they were the best of friends but that it was never more than that. She wanted it to be, but the chemistry just wasn’t there. What eventually drove them apart though was that his “revolutionary” spirit had no direction. And the darkness in him when he came out of prison. She wasn’t interested in that kind of lifestyle. He thought that she’d “gone Hollywood”, that she’d lost her edge. The saddest part, the way she tells it, is that she felt that he was starting to come out of that negative headspace at the time that he was killed. You can feel the emotion there. You can hear her love, how moving it was for her to go back to those memories. I could listen to her talk about that past for days. I suspect it’s the same for you if you too grew up in that past. When was the last time you saw Poetic Justice? I might have to Netflix that this weekend. Here’s Jada at LAX last night.
