Hollywood veterans Tim Roth and Allen Hughes talk about Tupac Shakur's blurred lines between art and life, and the brutal consequences of his method acting. Hollywood veterans Tim Roth and Allen Hughes talk about Tupac Shakur's blurred lines between art and life, and the brutal consequences of his method acting.
Tupac Shakur, Thandie Newton, and Tim Roth in "Gridlock'd", which premiered four months after Shakur died of gunshot injuries.
“Yeah – and?” I say. “So let’s keep it together.” I schlurp my drink—can’t work out if it’s hot or cold—smile at the stink-eyers in front, exchange crazed grins and knee squeezes with my girlfriend, and swivel my head back to the front. By the time I came to America hip hop obviously had a solid foothold on the music scene, but Tupac wasn’t on my radar – which is pathetic if I think about it. But it was a different world: cell phones weren’t available, and the internet was in its very early stages – so you listened to radio and you bought albums, you bought CDs.
It was also out to Laurence Fishburne at the time, but he had done a long run on a play that involved drugs and addiction [asdoes], so he backed away from it in the end. I was very keen on working with Laurence, so I was like ‘oh’. And we were back to square one.I was like, “You can stop right there. I need an actor who’s got some fucking chops to do this And it’s comedy, which is even harder. Serious [comedic] timing is going to be needed if we’re going to pull this off.
Then I get up to leave and I realize Tupac has just auditioned, which is the most idiotic concept, the idea of he auditioned – and not only that: he blew it out the water, but I felt that, and we talked about it later, that he obviously this pasty face Londonis sitting there. And he felt, “Well, I better let him know that I can do the job.” And he sure. He sure did.
I don’t know. I mean, I only saw the one side of him. I remember … um. I don’t … I don’t. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t wanna get tabloidy on it.I think he was a … I think he was … you know, yes, I think he was complicated, and I think he was an artist and he was brilliant. Um. I don’t know about that stuff.
This guy had been shot five times. And Tupac was joking with him. He said, “Well, you got one more on me.” We lived in each other’s pockets for a time, and the idea of someone getting gunned down was alien to where I came from, you know? It was a very strange and sad circumstance. We were going over to see the film, and she hadn’t made up her mind whether she could see it or not. Eventually she decided not to. Too much. Too much to see her boy that way at that point.
Shock G and Shakur of Digital Underground performing ‘Sex Packets’ in Indianapolis, Indiana, 1990. “, which was our crown jewel at the time: a beautiful black and white narrative. The last video was “If My Homie Calls”, and by that time our relationship was fracturing.. He was dealing with the challenges of fame. And he was starting to show signs of being erratic.
He was always this live wire: this third rail. One moment he could be very compassionate, understanding, almost really sensitive. And the next moment he’d just be running into a fire. He was like that from the moment I met him. We had a confrontation, and I could see in his eyes that every time he asked me a question, he knew what I was saying was the truth because Tupac wasn’t a liar. But he had already taken it to that point where he had all those guys.
I don’t even remember being shook by what happened. I had no time to be traumatized by what happened. You gotta look at the timeline; we were showing up for the music video for thesoundtrack, which went on to do platinum and do very well. We then went to the Cannes Film Festival and we’re like the toast of the town out there.
Death Row was something he was moving through – a temporary thing. An end to a means. He meant to get back to the community work he wanted to do. He wrote this out: all the meaningful songs and lyrics, and he was planning on getting back to that. What about things like six year old kid who got shot in the head? Or the sexual abuse? Seems there is a lot of collateral damage around this kind of lifestyle. I can imagine a lot of people judging anyone involved in all that fairly permanently. Writing them off as thugs and that’s that. But is all that just part of life in a messy world?
“Shooting someone to take their shit is as American as apple pie,” says Hughes. Pictured is Bonnie Elizabeth Parker, of outlaw duo Bonnie and Clyde. More than 20,000 people came to view her body as she lay in state following the pair’s bullet-riddled demise in 1934. It’s interesting you say that because, when you think about an uninhibited, verbal, articulate place, hip hop is the complete manifestation of the wild, wild west.
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