Jada Pinkett Smith Says Tupac Shakur Had Alopecia: ‘He Just Wouldn’t Talk About It’ (Exclusive)

Jada Pinkett Smith, who has spoken publicly about living with alopecia, says she shared the condition with her late friend Tupac Shakur.

Smith says in this week’s PEOPLE cover story that the legendary rapper also had alopecia, an autoimmune disease that causes unpredictable hair loss. “I don’t think Tupac ever talked about the alopecia he was suffering from,” she says of the revelation.

The actress and talk show host first opened up about her alopecia diagnosis in 2018, and has since become a prominent advocate for raising awareness about the condition.

Shakur experienced similar symptoms of hair loss to Smith, something she says began for the late rapper around 1991, when Oakland, California police arrested him for jaywalking. (Shakur later filed a lawsuit against the police department over the incident, which was eventually settled.)

“After he was in Northern California with the cops who beat him up, he started losing his hair. And his alopecia patterns were far more extreme than mine,” Smith recalls.

She claims that Shakur, who was killed in 1996, kept the details of his alopecia a secret because of social pressures at the time. “I don’t think Pac ever talked about his alopecia, but he also looked really good with a bald head,” notes Smith. “But that was at a time and era where you wouldn’t — he just didn’t want to talk about it.”

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For more on Jada Pinkett Smith, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.

The Emmy Award winner speculates, “I’m sure so [Shakur] if he were alive today, he would speak publicly about his condition.

Smith and Shakur’s friendship blossomed at the Baltimore School for the Arts in Maryland, which they both attended as teenagers. The star previously revealed to Howard Stern that she and the rapper once tried to move things along by kissing, but ultimately decided to remain friends. Their relationship was featured in the 2017 Shakur biopic All eyes on mewith Kat Graham as Smith.

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Smith tells PEOPLE that she ultimately hopes that talking about her alopecia — and Shakur’s — will further raise awareness of the condition, which affects as many as 6.7 million people in the U.S. alone, according to the National Alopecia Areata Foundation.

“I’m glad I had the opportunity and will continue to have the opportunity to talk about how alopecia affects me,” she says. “I just hope it gives people the freedom to talk about it and just not feel ashamed of it and not have that stigma. And there’s a lot of shame around alopecia.”

Jada Pinkett Smith on the cover of PEOPLE.

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Smith also tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue that about a decade ago, she dealt with a “tremendous amount of depression” where “voices” told her to “just kill yourself.” You’re worth nothing, you’re not s—.”

Those feelings subsided when Smith, whose memoir, Worthy, which will be released next week, she was introduced to the concept of an ayahuasca ceremony by her son Jaden Smith’s friends. “Ayahuasca helped me, it gave me a new intimate relationship with myself that I never had before,” she explains, adding that after she took the psychedelic drug for the first time, “suicidal thoughts completely disappeared.”

She also touches on her relationship with husband Will Smith, from whom she says she was separated for six years before he infamously slapped Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars. “We’re still figuring it out,” she adds of the state of their marriage. “We did really hard work together. We just got a deep love for each other and we’re going to figure out what that looks like for us.”

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Source: HIS Education