Thandiwe Newton Recalls Her Time With Tupac
Tattoo Teasing & Gun Violence Trauma: Thandiwe Newton Recalls Conversations With Tupac
Actress Thandiwe Newton opened up about her friendship with Tupac Shakur, calling the rapper/actor a “beautiful soul.”
During a recent appearance on The Jennifer Hudson Show, Newton talked about her time with the rapper on the set of the 1997 movie Gridlock’d. Newton admitted that she didn’t know much about rap or the rapper when she showed up on set.
“I was from England, and I didn’t know much about rap or spoken word,” Newton said. “And I arrived on set, and I’d done my research, and I’d seen him in movies. I was like, ‘What a great actor this guy is.'”
Newton noted that the two became fast friends and joked about how she would go to Pac’s trailer and tease the rapper “…about his tattoos.”
“Because I just didn’t have any clue and I’m like, ‘What is that?’ Apparently it was a crucifix and I’m like, It looks like a penis and balls,” Newton said. “I could tell at first he’s like wanting to get really cross, and then he just laughed and laughed and laughed.”
Newton added that she witnessed first-hand more serious moments, too, like the time he had to cut his cousin’s “allowance” after she went back to drugs. Or the times he would have to shell out money to help his family.
“I would just look at him and be like, ‘Geez, you’ve got so much responsibility, man. You’re looking after a whole extended family,'” Newton said. “And that’s just not what people thought of him as.”
Newton noted that Shakur was a “beautiful, caring poet,” even when he was just speaking. She also remembered Tupac telling her and Gridlock’d co-star Tim Roth about when he was shot in New York’s Quad Studios in 1994.
“He told us about being shot at close range and how it felt…for an elevator door to open and there’s a man standing there and he shoots at you five times and you are hit, hit, hit, hit,” Newton continued. “Tim and I just sort of sat barely able to breathe because this is a young man talking about nearly dying.”
“So when they said that it happened again,” Newton tearfully remembered, referencing the second time Tupac was shot some two years later. “It was just really hard. ‘Cause I heard him talk about how frightened he was. So I just knew that when it happened again, he must have been so frightened. And I loved him.”
