“For me, it’s a celebration and healing process, because I lost a friend and somebody I worked with,” Shipp Sr. I didn’t start paying attention until everybody else started noticing as he got older.”Īnd now he’s watching his son re-create his friend’s death. “I didn’t see it at a young age,” Shipp Sr. says. As we talk about his son landing the role, he reveals that he produced Tupac and Jodeci’s collaboration “Toss It Up” and used to bring his son to the studio sessions where Tupac and the rest of the Death Row Records artists would record. Oddly enough, Shipp never saw the resemblance between his then-7-year-old son and the legendary artist he was working with. and in between takes, I meet Demetrius Shipp Sr., the father of the young actor. “I never liked Las Vegas, even before this happened. He pauses and looks around at the surrounding casinos with a hint of disgust on his face. “It’s taking me right back to that moment, to that time, to the emotions, to everything,” he tells me between takes. Mean, who is 20 years older now, reprises his role as he calls for help while Tupac is bleeding out. He was definitely handpicked by some higher power to play this role.”įor the next couple of hours, the harrowing scene is played out multiple times, where Suge Knight hooks his BMW 750iL into a nearby parking lot as he checks on Tupac, who was shot four times by an assailant who, to this day, has yet to be identified. He probably didn’t know it, and I’m sure that nobody that knew him knew it. “Some people have a predetermined destiny. “It’s surreal,” Greenridge says of Shipp’s uncanny likeness to his late friend. Greenridge, in particular, considering he was a member of Tupac’s Outlawz crew and rode in the car behind Tupac when the shooting happened. Hutton and Malcolm “E.D.I Mean” Greenridge are there, helping with the details.
Source Courtesy of Morgan Creek Productions at the Los Angeles premiere of All Eyez On Me on June 14, 2017.