As “Dear Mama” director Alan Hughes prepares to celebrate the legacy of hip hop legend Tupac Shakur in FX’s new documentary, Hughes vows to “demystify” Tupac’s fatal shooting, which many people has become a legend of his own.
Hughes told TheWrap, “The first thing I said was, ‘We couldn’t make this movie, and have these young people go away and think it’s sexy, die like this’.” “It’s ugly, it’s cruel, not only what happened to her, but how it affects her family and friends and loved ones.”
Tupac died on September 13, 1996, from wounds sustained in a drive-by shooting 6 days earlier, which has been the subject of conspiracy theories, including alleged ties to the murder of Notorious B.I.G., 6 months later.
Hughes continued, “When something is larger than life, like Camelot, JFK, nobody can believe it.” “It’s little Lee Harvey Oswald hanging outside the window that shot you. I tried to demystify the mystery and bring it down to earth and make sure we were responsible and not glorifying any of the tropes and traps of gangster rap bulls-t.
The FX series, which premiered April 21 on Hulu, explores the intertwined narratives of Shakur and his mother, Afeni, whose involvement in the Black Panthers shaped themes of racial justice and inequality that often appeared in their lyrics.
The first episode of the five-part series ends with an account of the rapper’s firsthand experience with police brutality, a painful example of racial injustice that his close friends say changed him.
Hughes pointed to the “eerie” similarity to the fatal 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin, noting that Tupac and Afeni’s story reminds viewers of the “never-ending” struggle and fight for justice.
Hughes said, “Her legacy lives on as it is in music—that eternal struggle for social justice and human rights, women’s rights.” “If you take your eyes off the prize, you have nothing – you have to be vigilant to keep what you seem to have.”
Ahead of the documentary launch, TheWrap sat down with Hughes to discuss intergenerational stories and how to weave together the series’ spectacular opening.
TheWrap: How did you go about building relationships with Tupac and Afeni’s family and friends? Were they hesitant about any parts of the series you wanted to delve into?
Alan Hughes: You just have to sit down with as many people who are willing to sit down as family, friends, Black Panther veterans of Afeni’s past. There were people who were reluctant sometimes at first, and that was probably my intentions, but as word started to spread, each interview averaged two, three [or] Four hours in, sometimes, more people would unlock and hear that they had a really good experience and a meaningful experience with the production and with me, and so many people started emerging that initially didn’t even agree to be interviewed.
You open the series with a police intervention incident after Tupac played “Dear Mama” for the first time. Why did you choose to start this series at this moment?
This Is The Moment Everyone In His Life And Hip Hop Journalists Say He Became Legendary When He Shot Two Off-Duty Police Officers Trying To Protect A Black Man [from] being assaulted by them, and he didn’t know they were officers—they were plainclothes—and then that night, when everybody came back to the hotel room, everybody was scared of going to jail, and The cops were knocking on the door, and he just wants to play this new demo of a song. And this is “Dear Mother”. I had never heard that story, and it is astonishing that no one has ever heard that story.
I believe in the first five minutes you have to promise the audience. What is it, why is it and how are we going to tell the story, and you have to deliver on that promise. That particular opening shows how, and I mean this in a meaningful and profound way, how absurd his life was that this was the thing he was focused on. It really connects to the shoot, because you get to know that he was trained for moments like that.
While Tupac discovers his activist roots from his mother, Afeni also goes through her own journey of activism, motherhood, and addiction that runs parallel to her son’s. How did you end up telling their journeys together?
It’s two different generations, two different time frames and trying to blend them together is always a difficult task. But once you start honing it and figuring out the central themes, it becomes a simple equation when you go “Hey, whatever story we’re telling on the Tupac side, or the Afeni side, Is it related to the other person?’ It all has to be interconnected in some way. We have to see that we experienced the whole narrative through the prism of their relationship and what they meant to each other, so A lot of things happened along the way, and that made it even easier [of] a task.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
‘Dear Mama’ is now streaming on Hulu.
