Will Smith on his “raging jealousy” of 2Pac: “I hated that I wasn't what he was”
Will Smith has spoken about his “raging jealousy” of 2Pac in his new autobiography, Will, which was released yesterday (November 9).
The actor’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, was close with the late rapper after meeting him at the Baltimore School for the Arts in the 1980s.
Smith has now admitted that he felt threatened by his wife’s past relationship with ‘Pac and that his “mind was tortured by their connection”.
“Though they were never intimate, their love for each other is legendary – they defined ‘ride or die,’” Smith writes in his new book. “In the beginning of our relationship, my mind was tortured by their connection. He was PAC! and I was me.”
He continues: “Pac was like Harry [Smith’s younger brother] – he triggered the perception of myself as a coward. 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.”
Smith went on to say that he felt a “twisted kind of victory” when Jada spent more time with him than with 2Pac.
“If she chose me over Tupac, there was no way I could be a coward,” he says. “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.”
Smith also touched upon how 2Pac had a “fearless passion that was intoxicating, a militant morality, and a willingness to fight and die for what he believed was right.”
Smith previously touched upon 2Pac and Jada’s relationship during an appearance on The Breakfast Club in January 2020.
“[Me and 2Pac] had a little bit of a thing because [2Pac and Jada] grew up together, and they loved each other, but they never had a sexual relationship,” he said at the time. “But, they had come into that age where now that was a possibility, and then Jada was with me.”
He added, “‘Pac had a little thing on that, but she just loved him. Like, he was the image of perfection, but she was with The Fresh Prince.”
The King Richard star opened up about the struggles his son faced after their 2013 film After Earth bombed commercially and critically, with Jaden enduring attacks from the media.
