“It kinda felt like ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ because I couldn’t tell anybody that he was there,” Guy said during an appearance on ‘Sherri’
Jasmine Guy is opening up about the time she housed Tupac Shakur.
During an appearance on daytime talk show Sherri on Thursday, the singer and actress revealed that she let the late rapper stay with her when he needed a safe space in New York in 1994.
“Well, the development was after the shooting in New York,” Guy, now 61, told host Sherri Shepherd of Shakur, whom she met when he starred on A Different World. “First of all, I was hanging out with Tupac because he was good friends with Jada [Pinkett Smith]. We were always hanging out after the show.”
After he was shot, Guy and Pinkett Smith tried visiting Shakur at the hospital. By the time they got there, he had already left.
“He didn’t feel safe there. He did just get shot,” she recalled. “He felt like a sitting duck. And because I had a low profile and they didn’t know we were friends… It kinda felt like The Diary of Anne Frank because I couldn’t tell anybody that he was there.”
Guy went on to explain that Shakur stayed with her for a couple weeks, until his wounds had healed. His family was also staying with him.
“Everyone was in that one room,” she recalled. She also told his family, “‘If we’re gonna keep it peaceful, everyone has to leave by 10 p.m.’ And that lasted about two days.”
“‘You don’t understand. We’re the Shakurs. We’re gonna show you how to have a family life,'” his family responded. “It was fun, other than the stress of it.”
In October, a new authorized biography of the late rapper, Tupac Shakur by Staci Robinson, was released by Penguin Random House. In chronicling the music legend’s life, the book explores how significant his relationship was with Pinkett Smith, 52, whom he met in high school when they were aspiring actors and quickly considered a “lifelong friend.”
Robinson writes in the biography, which was authorized by the star’s mother Afeni Shakur Davisbefore her death in 2016, that the All Eyez on Me artist met the actress at an assembly at their Maryland high school, Baltimore School for the Arts, for students in the theater department. “We hit it off from that moment on,” Pinkett Smith said in a previous interview reprinted in Tupac Shakur.
Related: Jada Pinkett Smith Opens Up About Friendship with ‘Soulmate’ Tupac Shakur: ‘It Was Like God Made Us That Way’
The Red Table Talk host explained that the two had “a connection” and were able to talk to each other about their financial struggles and mothers’ substance abuse issues. Quickly, they realized their connection meant that they were to be “lifelong friends.”
“When you have somebody that has your back when you feel like you’re nothing, that’s everything,” the Emmy winner said.
The “California Love” rapper’s sister Sekyiwa Shakur opens up about her brother’s relationships with Pinkett Smith and their friend John Cole at the time in the book. “All I remember is John coming over to the house all the time. And nothing else could be talked about but Jada,” she said in Tupac Shakur. “His music changed. This people changed. And Jada came — the entity! The magazine posters had come off his wall and John’s art went up on his wall. And pictures of Jada.”
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