Dennis Quaid Recalls Working With 2Pac on 'Gang Related': 'He Had Such a Great Heart'
The pair starred opposite each other in the movie, which arrived after 2Pac died in 1996.
Dennis Quaid and 2Pac go way back.
In a new episode of the PBD Podcast, the storied actor reminisced on his time starring opposite 2Pac in the 1997 film, Gang Related.
“That was so great,” Quaid said of working with the late emcee, at around the 1:22:00 hour mark. “I was kinda familiar with 2Pac when we did that movie. We both loved Chinese food, it turns out. So he and I would be in the trailer like every day. We had Chinese food five days in a row,” he laughed.
“At the time, I really didn’t know much about who he was,” the 70-year-old continued. “I knew who he was but it’s like we got in there and we talked about acting, we talked about growing up, we talked about our mothers. … He had such a great heart. He was such a talented actor too and he had a thirst to learn.”
Quaid then described Tupac as a “poet,” saying, “He told the story of how they tried to kill him before in New York and it was hysterical the way he told it but it was like for real. Then six months later … he got killed,” Quaid added, getting visibly upset. “That one really hit me hard. It really did.”
When host Patrick Bet-David asked why his death hit so hard, Quaid said that 2Pac would have been “a uniter of people” because you “could not put him in a…box.” Quaid then asked, “What could have been?”
“He was just a human being,” Quaid explained. “He was a kid and he was a vulnerable person. … He had a poet’s heart. …You never put the two of us together, eating Chinese food in a trailer. But there we were.”
The All Eyez on Me rapper died in Las Vegas in September 1996 before Gang Related arrived in October 1997. The film follows the story of two corrupt cops (James Belushi and 2Pac) who try to frame a homeless man (Quaid) for the death of an undercover DEA agent whom they killed.
