How Director Allen Hughes Captured (and Combined) Tupac and Afeni Shakur’s Legacies for ‘Dear Mama’ FX Docuseries
When filmmaker Allen Hughes was first approached with the opportunity to make a documentary about Tupac’s legacy, he wasn’t sure he was the right guy to tackle it.
“It was an intense friendship,” Hughes told the crowd assembled at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles to watch the series’ premiere episode. He continued, joking that filming his last documentary, the 2017 Grammy and NAACP Image Award-winning series “The Defiant Ones,” nearly “sent him to the loony bin,” so he wasn’t sure if he wanted to dive into something this personal. Making a documentary takes a long time, but it’s also very intimate business.
“When I was asked to consider doing this, I said, ‘There’s a lot I don’t understand about Tupac.’ I think he’s one of the most misunderstood figures of the 20th century,” Hughes recalled. “I said, ‘I’ll probably learn a lot more if I discover Afeni and her narrative.’” “Dear Mama” includes archive footage of Tupac and Afeni discussing their lives, as well as interviews with close family and friends — including Glo Cox , Mutulu and fellow Black Panther Party leader Jamal Joseph – plus Tupac’s musical contemporaries like Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Digital Underground’s Money-B and Chopmaster J.
For example, many viewers might not know about Afeni’s contributions to the first version of the Patients’ Bill of Rights. They might not know how, just a month before Tupac was born, Afeni passionately defended herself and her fellow activists in the landmark “Panther 21” court case, sealing her acquittal of more than 150 charges of conspiracy.
Hughes’ thought called to mind a conversation Joseph had with fellow executive producer, hip-hop historian and journalist Nelson George.
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