Credit: Alamy

Tupac Shakur and Will Smith’s distant affiliation was complex and is still a sore subject for Smith to this day. Before the late rapper picked up the mic, he studied at the Baltimore School for the Arts, where he had an extremely close relationship with Jada Pinkett-Smith.

Both were looking to enter the acting profession, and Shakur was a part-time drug dealer when they met. However, unlike Shakur, Jada Pinkett-Smith ultimately graduated from the school while the rapper was sent to California by his mother. Irrespective of this, it is still thought that had he remained in Baltimore, the two would have begun dating.

Still, by the early 1990s, Tupac had begun to make a name for himself. In 1991, the star released his first major label project, 2Pacalypse Now. Following this, an abundance of acting opportunities presented themselves. However, Will Smith was also at his height during the 1990s.

Will Smith was Shakur’s competition in Hollywood, and before he died in 1996, Tupac was up for a movie role that Smith would ultimately snatch. The ‘Dear Mama’ rhymer had been involved in high-budget motion pictures for many years, and by 1996, he’d already starred in four legendary movies: Juice, Poetic Justice, Above the Rim, and Gridlock’d.

Still, before he was murdered in a Las Vegas drive-by, 2Pac had been rejected for a role in the Sci-Fi thriller Independence Day. The film’s executives wanted Shakur. However, the movie’s writer and director, Roland Emmerich, insisted that Will Smith get the role.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Emmerich recalled, “Ethan Hawke was on our list too, but I thought at that time he was too young. It was pretty clear it had to be Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum. That was the combo we thought. The studio said, ‘No, we don’t like Will Smith. He’s unproven. He doesn’t work in international [markets].'”

During the mid-1990s, Smith still wasn’t considered a big Hollywood movie star capable of carrying a film and was still known as the comedy actor from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. However, Independence Day completely shook up Smith’s career and took him to a new level.

The film had a budget of $75 million, and, despite Smith only being known for TV, it grossed over $800 million worldwide. After Independence Day, Smith shot to stardom and quickly began getting more film roles than ever before. As such, by the turn of the millennium, Smith had become the only actor to have eight films gross more than $100million domestically — and then gross more than $150million internationally.

Despite Independence Day’s success two decades after its release, when Smith was presented with the sequel, he declined to appear in it, telling Entertainment Weekly he preferred “trying to go forward versus clinging and clawing backwards.”