Rosie Perez recently opened up about the role she played in getting pop icon Madonna and rap legend Tupac Shakur together on "The Drew Barrymore Show."
In a recent media appearance, the actress opened up about the surprise couple that was formed more than 30 years ago.
Speaking candidly in an interview, Perez said her date for the 7th Annual Soul Train Music Awards back in 1993 fell through at the very last minute. Perez had even received a call from her date 30 minutes before the event apologizing as he couldn't go because his girlfriend would spot him.
"And I'd put down the phone and thought, 'What am I going to do now?'" Perez narrated. "Oh, well then Tupac rang me up and said, 'You can go with me. We're gonna walk up in there — we're gonna pretend like we on a date and he gon' die."
At the awards ceremony, Perez ran into Madonna, who asked if she and Tupac were dating. Madonna told him they were only friends but expressed a desire to meet Tupac.
"I said, 'You got it!,'" Perez recalled. And that, as they say, is how the story begins.
Madonna, 66, and Tupac Shakur — who died in 1996 at only 25 — had a brief relationship that lasted almost two years before they parted ways in January 1995.
Though the pair kept things contained for the most part, Madonna discovered how much Shakur wanted to date her in a letter he wrote on January 15, 1995, according to ABC News.
Shakur added in the letter that being photographed with a black man was "going to hurt" Madonna's career and explained the double standard.
"For you to be seen with a black man wouldn't in any way jeopardize your career; if anything, it would make you seem that much more open and exciting," he wrote. But he expressed worry about his image as fans were always quick to criticize.
As reported by Vogue, the letter was composed while he was at the Clinton Correctional Facility.
Madonna was 34 and Tupac was 21 when they were in a relationship in the early 1990s.
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