Jim Carrey was at the height of his fame in 1995 and largely regarded an unstoppable force in acting when his world collided with another icon — Tupac Shakur.
Word had got round to Carrey about Tupac’s appreciation for his work on screen, and he even discovered he was the rapper’s favourite actor. They were both at the peak of their powers, and arguably there wasn’t a person in either of their chosen fields who had more cache attached to their name when their worlds collided.
Carrey’s 1994 saw him star in The Mask, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and Dumb & Dumber, which asserted him as the premier comedic voice of Hollywood. Meanwhile, Pac had enjoyed a similar rise a couple of years prior, but his world had come crumbling down when in February 1995, he was sentenced to prison after being found guilty at a sexual abuse trial.
During the hearing, Shakur burst into tears and apologised to the victim for any pain he’d caused but respectively maintained that he hadn’t committed any crime.
Opening up about his time in jail, Pac later recalled, “For the first eight months, I spent in solitude, for 23 hours a day I was locked down, reading, writing. I wrote a script called, Live To Tell, it’s semi-autobiographical, half me, half fiction. It’s real good, it’s my first time writing a screenplay.”
He added, “I used to add things to Poetic Justice, I wrote whole scenes in Above The Rim, in Juice, I added a lot of my own words, but this was the first time I sat down to write a whole script with characters, so with Live To Tell I did that.”
One unlikely person who supported him was Carrey, who allegedly reached out to Tupac while he was inside on multiple occasions. During this isolating time, he became a close confidante, and the two grew close.
The letters were humorous and intended to offer the rapper a slice of light relief while he was locked up. Unfortunately, Carrey has repeatedly refused to share these documents that he sent to Shakur, and it remains a mystery what precisely he said.
While it is understandable why Carrey doesn’t want everyone to know what was said between the pair during their private conversations, it would be a shame if they never see the light of day and the inner workings of their relationship are kept hidden.
