Will Smith says he was jealous and insecure of wife Jada's close friendship with Tupac: 'I couldn't handle it'
Will Smith recently revealed how he struggled to cope with his insecurity regarding his wife Jada Pinkett Smith's close bond with the late great rapper, Tupac Shakur aka 2Pac.
During an appearance on the show 'The Breakfast Club', the 51-year-old actor, who was promoting his latest movie 'Bad Boys for Life' (which releases on January 31) with his co-star Martin Lawrence, was asked by the co-host Charlamagne tha God if he had ever been jealous of Jada's relationship with the deceased rapper.
"Oh, f*** yeah. Oh, my God," said Will, who was a celebrated young rapper himself while starting out in the entertainment industry. "That was in the early days and it was like, that was a big regret for me, too, because I could never open up to interact with Pac."
The 'Fresh Prince' star went on to reveal that Tupac and him "had a little bit of a thing" over their mutual love for Jada Pinkett, who had been friends with Shakur ever since they were kids.
"You know, they grew up together and they loved each other but they never had a sexual relationship but they had come into that age where it was a possibility and then Jada was with me," said Will, who acknowledged that things had been rather tense back then between the two young rappers. "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, you know? So, I never could, we were in the room together a couple of times, I couldn't speak to him, and he wasn't going to speak to me if I wasn't going to speak to him."
Charlamagne tha God was surprised to hear about the tension between the two, saying, "Really? It seems like y’all would have so much in common." Will agreed with him, saying "That’s what Jada would say all the time, 'I'm telling you, y'all are so similar, you would love him.'"
But Will was a big enough man to admit that he was just being egotistical and immature back then.
"I just never... that was a huge regret of mine, I couldn't handle it. I was the soft rapper from Philly and he was Pac," he confessed, referring to Tupac's legendary gangsta street cred. The 'Men in Black' star also explained that it was mostly due to his confidence issues as a young man. "I was deeply, deeply insecure and I wasn't man enough to handle that relationship," the actor concluded.
Will's wife, Jada, originally met the rapper 2Pac on her first day of high school in Baltimore and they forged a deep and close friendship. However, Jada said that she had to walk away from the friendship after she felt that the troubled rapper's life was getting too dangerous. Tupac Shakur was later tragically killed at the age of 25 in a gang-related drive-by shooting in September 1996.