Sep 26, 1997443 words · 2 min
Tupac on his goals as an actor
September 1997: A promo interview from August 1996, weeks before Las Vegas, shows Tupac as an actor with great self-belief and big plans.
Original: “Tupac Talks About Acting Goals In One Of His Last Interviews” · MTV News · no byline · September 26, 1997
To promote Gang Related, his last film, MGM sent the media a so-called electronic press kit. Inside this promo package was an interview Tupac Shakur had given in August 1996, just weeks before he was shot in Las Vegas on September 7. MTV News got an advance copy and showed a Tupac who talks with total self-assurance about his potential on screen.
Finding the true spot
Tupac couldn’t explain why he of all people had that presence. Everyone has different strengths, he said: basketball isn’t his thing, acting is. “I can act. I know how to go to that true spot in myself.” Because he goes there every day, it is easy for him to switch to neutral and take on any character.
Plenty of people, he said, have trouble looking themselves in the face. He, on the other hand, had not sold his soul. He saw that as the reason for his success, for six million records sold, and for coming out of prison “without a scratch.” He wanted to bring that honesty to every role, as a way of repaying the blessing.
The look ahead
The most quoted line of the interview looked far into the future: “I could be the best actor anybody’s ever seen, given the chance.” In the next breath he dialed it back: he didn’t even need to be the best, just one of them.
These statements carry weight because they are not a eulogy but Tupac’s own words from his final weeks. They matched what critics and colleagues said after Gridlock’d: in January 1997, MTV had reported that some considered acting his greatest talent.
Six million records and an October opening
The six million records he mentions were more self-portrait than exact balance sheet. According to the Associated Press in April 1997, All Eyez on Me had sold five million copies by then; Tupac was probably counting his earlier albums as well. The prison he meant was his 1995 incarceration in New York State.
MTV gave October 10, 1997 as the opening date of Gang Related. Box Office Mojo counts the opening weekend from that Friday, but the film had actually opened two days earlier, on Wednesday, October 8. Fortune and Fame, the song Tupac previews for the soundtrack in the interview, is covered on the page about Kurt Loder’s MTV broadcast from the same day.