Women and relationships1996 to 1996
Salli Richardson
Actress Salli Richardson is named as a short-lived girlfriend of Tupac. None of it is documented. Here is what we do know.
This page exists because it already existed on the old United-Tupac.Com, under “2Pacs Frauen” in 2003 and “Seine Freundinnen” in 2007. It looks different today because what it said back then cannot be verified.
Who Salli Richardson is
Salli Richardson-Whitfield, born in Chicago in 1967, is an actress, director and producer. She became known in the 1990s for roles such as the action comedy A Low Down Dirty Shame (1994) and as the voice of police detective Elisa Maza in the animated series Gargoyles. Later she appeared in Antwone Fisher (2002) and I Am Legend (2007) and had a lead role in the series Eureka.
Since the 2010s she has worked mainly as a television director. She has received several Emmy nominations for series such as Winning Time and The Gilded Age; in 2024, with an episode of Winning Time, she became the first Black woman nominated for directing a drama series, and in 2026 she received two nominations in that category, for The Gilded Age and Task.
What is claimed
A brief affair is described that supposedly began in June 1996 on the set of Gridlock’d in Los Angeles and ended after about two weeks; Salli Richardson was said to appear in the film. Further details were explicitly based on “rumours.”
What we could check
- Salli Richardson does not appear in the cast of Gridlock’d (1997), which starred Tim Roth, Tupac and Thandiwe Newton.
- No relationship between her and Tupac is documented, either in interviews with the people involved or in any press reports we could find.
- The accounts themselves speak only of “rumours.”
Since this concerns the private life of a living person, we do not carry these claims over. Should reliable sources turn up, such as statements by Salli Richardson-Whitfield herself, the page will be updated.
Why the page stays
Old links to salli-richardson should not lead nowhere. And the page shows, by example, how United-Tupac.Com now handles the material from back then: what is documented stays and is told better; what was only rumour is named as such and not passed on.