Regina King Says Janet Jackson Had “Chemistry” With Tupac During “Poetic Justice” Filming

Janet and Pac may not have just been love interests in the movie.
When Janet Jackson’s four-part docu-series launched on Lifetime in late January, many revelations were revealed about Janet’s young life and rise to stardom. Whether it be her relationship with superstar brother Michael Jackson or her longtime partner Jermaine Dupri, the documentary gave a lot of insight on the people in Janet’s life.

One particular moment regarding Tupac surprised fans, which specifically spoke on Janet and Pac’s on-set relationship while filming the 1993 classic movie Poetic Justice. Towards the end of the movie, Tupac and Janet’s characters share a kiss, and co-star Regina King asserted that this was not the furthest extent of their affinity for each other.

While Janet was married to René Elizondo Jr. at the time, Regina emphasized how fond of each other they were: “Having Janet and 2Pac was huge because he was one of the biggest Hip Hop stars and she was definitely the biggest pop star. I think they were both impressed with each other, but I don’t feel like either one of them wanted to let the other know.”

Aside from just admiration, King said they got along very well and there was a clear positive tension between them that they never necessarily acted on: “I don’t know if Janet will ever admit to it, but there was a bit of that chemistry going on. You could cut the air in the room at times. But she was in a relationship with René, make no mistake about it.”

After the movie came out in 1993, Tupac hoped to keep a friendship with Jackson, but said on the Arsenio Hall Show that she quickly changed her phone number after she gave her old one to him: “It bothered me, it probably wasn’t intentional, everybody changes their number. I really thought I made a friend, I thought it was, ‘I know Janet Jackson for life’ but as soon as the movie was over it was like ‘Boop, this number has been changed. It was like the day after the movie wrapped.”

As we all know, Tupac passed away three years later in 1996, but it would have been interesting to see if he and Janet would have ever pursued a relationship.