The murders of Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. Biggie Smalls, still remain a mystery, but everyone has their own theory about what really happened. The cast of USA’s Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and The Notorious B.I.G. spoke exclusively with Us Weekly about what they knew going into the show and what they learned at the end.
“For all I knew … Tupac might still be alive! They went as crazy as that,” Josh Duhamel, who portrays Detective Greg Kading in the 10-part series, told Us. “One can only hope to have people speculate on whether or not he’s still alive or not. I wish people do that about me, but they won’t. Tupac Shakur was larger than life.”
Bokeem Woodbine takes on the role of Officer Daryn Dupree, but in real life, he was a friend of Tupac and for a long time, stayed away from the theories and stories about the mysterious murders. “I never really allowed my mind to wander too much about what really happened because it was personal to me and I just couldn’t go there,” Woodbine said. “My mind would kind of shut off when it would get to that point. People would ask me, ‘What do you think happened?’ and I just couldn’t even think about it. So that’s one of the reasons why I feel blessed to have this opportunity. For me, it’s kind of cathartic to work on this project and get to the bottom of some things.”
While doing research and reading the scripts, Woodpine revealed he was very impressed with “how meticulous” the writers were. “There were so many bizarre coincidences and just ‘wow’ occurrences from the side of the investigation that you would think it was made up,” he said.
“The show is called Unsolved, but we all know what happened. And that’s one thing that I think people are going to be most surprised by,” Duhamel added. “We have a very good idea — whether we agree that the police were involved — there were definitely some shady things that were going on. Did they do it? Did they not do it? It’s not what you know, it’s what you can prove, and that’s the tragedy of this story. There’s so many conflicting theories that it’s hard to sift through it all and find out what the actual truth is.”
Westworld’s Jimmi Simpson, who portrays Detective Russell Poole in the drama, also added that while the show is scripted, it still portrays factual information. “Other attempts at this story have been like, ‘Oh, all of this stuff, or this is the take.’ [Producers] Kyle [Long] and Anthony [Hemingway] made such a concerned effort to say, ‘These are three takes and all of these are completely legit. No facts have been boiled over,’” Simpson explained. “That leads you to a conclusion. It’s not about trying to get you to come to a conclusion. You’ll get there.”
Unsolved premieres on USA Tuesday, February 27, at 10 p.m. ET.
