Jada Pinkett Smith Says She Was A Drug Dealer, Plans To Release Book Detailing Relationship With Tupac

While promoting her new movie Girls Trip on SiriusXM radio’s Sway in the Morning Wednesday, Jada Pinkett Smith revealed shocking details about her past. The actress also opened up about her friendship with late rapper Tupac Shakur.

When Shade 45 morning radio show host Sway asked the actress about her relationship with Tupac, Pinkett Smith explained that she was a drug dealer when she and the rapper first met. They attended high school together in Baltimore in the mid-1980s.

“It’s kind of hard because I haven’t really told the whole story. One of the things that’s very interesting that I’ve never really said before is that when I first met Pac, I was a drug dealer,” Pinkett Smith told Sway.

For the first time, the actress described that when she met Tupac, she was just “coming out” of the drug-dealing lifestyle after “something bad” happened to her, which she did not reveal on the show. Meanwhile, she says Tupac was “coming more into the life.” She explained that their relationship was more about survival than romance.

“There was a point in which we met and then we kind of were going our separate ways. And I just felt like, ‘OK God, one day you’re going to do for Pac what you did for me, which is you saved me. And that just never happened for him. And so that is something that I am constantly having to confront. I know that most people wanna always connect us in this romance thing, but that’s just because they don’t have the story. But it was based in survival, how we held each other down, you know what I’m saying? And when we have somebody that has your back when you feel like you’re nothing, that’s everything.”

There’s been speculation surrounding Pinkett Smith and Tupac’s relationship for years. She has always explained that their friendship was strictly platonic in her eyes. In 2015, while promoting the film Magic Mike XXL, she sat down with radio show host Howard Stern and said she and the rapper were not physically attracted to one another and even shared “the most disgusting kiss for both of them” after she forced him to kiss her.

Last month, during the release of the Tupac biopic All Eyez on Me, Pinkett Smith took to Twitter and said that she was “deeply hurt” by how the pair’s relationship was portrayed on film.

Forgive me… my relationship to Pac is too precious to me for the scenes in All Eyez On Me to stand as truth.

— Jada Pinkett Smith (@jadapsmith) June 16, 2017

The reimagining of my relationship to Pac has been deeply hurtful.

— Jada Pinkett Smith (@jadapsmith) June 16, 2017

Tupac was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas in September of 1996. His murder has never been solved. Pinkett Smith went on to marry rapper and actor Will Smith in 1997.

Pinkett Smith has yet to give up all the details about her friendship with Tupac. She said on the radio show that she plans to tell more in an upcoming book.

Girls Trip debuts in theaters nationwide on Friday.

[Featured Image by Robin Marchant/Getty Images]