Marlon Wayans Recalls Bittersweet 2Pac Meeting '20 Minutes Before He Got Shot'

Marlon Wayans has opened up about meeting 2Pac in Las Vegas on the same night he was shot.

Speaking with Shannon Sharpe on his Club Shay Shay podcast, Wayans recalled running into the rapper with fellow actor Omar Epps just 20 minutes before he was targeted in the fateful 1996 drive-by shooting.

“I saw 2Pac in Vegas at The Luxor 20 minutes before he got shot,” the Don’t Be a Menace star said. “I seen Suge and all these cars and thugs and reds. I turned white. I was like, ‘M-m-m-maybe we shouldn’t go over there. Let’s just wave from here.’

“Omar [Epps] was like, ‘Nah, we gotta go say what’s up and pay our respects.’ ‘Pac was a huge star at this time. And I was like, ‘Are you sure? It sure looks like a lot of trouble over there.'”

Wayans added that he and Epps did go over to the All Eyez On Me MC and chopped it up with him for a short while.

“I give him a hug, we all talk, kick it for five minutes,” he continued. “And the BMW pulls up. Me, Omar and Mitchell [Marchand] get in a cab and we pull off. I’ll never forget the look on 2Pac’s face as we pulled off. He was looking at us like, ‘Man, I miss that freedom, I miss that fun.’

“He was just in this chaos. There was a part of him that wished that — it was like the innocence. [He wished that] he could just go with the innocence. And so we left and then 20 minutes later, we heard he got shot.”

Marlon Wayans has previously spoken about his relationship with 2Pac, who he worked with on the 1994 film Above the Rim.

He told ESPN in 2014: “Me and ‘Pac had a great relationship. You know what was great about ‘Pac? Everybody thinks he was this thug, this gangster. First of all, he was a performance high school kid. ‘Pac was very smart and he was very silly. He was a clown. He wasn’t real gangster but he acted gangster.

“He was a method actor, so he went a little too far. He was like, ‘Oh, I’ll shoot you!’ Pow! He’d really shoot you. He’d overcommit. I could tell he wasn’t a gangster because he had the softest hands. No gangster has hands [like that]. I call him a Palmolive thug.

“He’d be like, ‘Come here, you want some of this,’ and then he’d give you this gentle hand. It was soft. Then he had these long eyelashes looking like [Mr.] Snuffleupagus, just like, ‘You don’t want none of this. I’m thug!’”

Wayans is not the first person to speak about the night of 2Pac’s shooting. Last year, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels revealed that Run-DMC were supposed to be in the same car as ‘Pac on the way to the Bruce Seldon vs. Mike Tyson fight, after which the gunfire erupted.

“We get a call, it’s Suge. ‘Yo, me and ‘Pac coming to get y’all. You’re gonna ride to the fight with us.’ ‘Cause remember, who was in the [BMW 750iL] with them? Nobody was in the backseat. Me, [Rev.] Run and [Jam Master] Jay were supposed to be in that backseat,” he said on Drink Champs.

DMC went on to reveal that Jam Master Jay taking so long to get ready was the reason they didn’t end up hitching a ride with ‘Pac and Suge.

“When Jay would get dressed, Jay would have all his clothes out there. It’s worse than your wife or girl getting [dressed],” he joked. “We say, ‘We’ll meet y’all at the afterparty.’ We get to the afterparty, [MC] Hammer’s there, the whole crew, everybody’s there.

“So we in the club waiting for the fight to end, all of a sudden one dude comes in. It’s about 100 people in there — they all leave. Empty cup, music off. A guy comes in with a briefcase […] He opens it up, $200,000 cash there. ‘Y’all getting paid tonight, just no show. Go home.’ We didn’t know what was going on.”

DMC added: “So next morning, I had an afternoon flight. I’m in the gym on the treadmill and then CNN — ‘Last night in Vegas, 2Pac got shot.’ Like, ‘Oh shit, that’s why that happened.’”