Janet Jackson wanted the late Tupac Shakur to get tested for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, ahead of the kiss she and the “cat about town” filmed for “Poetic Justice” in 1992.
The “Rhythm Nation” pop star, now 59, called on producer Steve Nicolaides to make the sensitive request, according to an excerpt The Hollywood Reporter published from Jeff Pearlman’s “Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur,” out Tuesday.
“You know, Tupac’s reputation is that he’s a cat about town,” the Grammy winner reportedly said. “And I don’t want to swap saliva with him until I’m really sure that he’s healthy and clean.”
Though the HIV virus can be contracted through bodily fluids including blood, semen, breast milk, rectal or vaginal fluids, it cannot be spread through saliva.
Jackson at the time said she was appealing to Nicolaides after director John Singleton “just walked off when I mentioned it.”
Nicolaides — whose credits include “When Harry Met Sally,” “Boyz n the Hood,” and “A Few Good Men” — did as requested, to which Shakur allegedly said: “F–k her. I ain’t doing s–t for that b—h. Tell her to go f–k herself.”
Though Nicolaides says Tupac — who was fatally shot in a 1996 drive-by shooting — “never got the test,” he believes the musician “found it amusing.”
Regardless, Nicolaides said he “can’t blame Janet for asking. It was the early 1990s, and people were still dying of AIDS. And Tupac, God love him, had a reputation.”
Pearlman in the book recounts the tensions between the already established Jackson and up-and-comer Shakur, who “definitely did not have warm feelings for Janet,” according to his friend and Lords of the Underground rapper Dupré Kelly.
