Summary
Demetrius Shipp Jr. never acted before playing Tupac Shakur in "All Eyez on Me" but his connections to the rapper, and to acting, go back to his childhood.
Shipp's dad is a music producer who worked on one of Shakur's songs.
Those connections didn't exactly prepare Shipp to play Shakur in a biopic but a four-year delay between casting and production was enough time for the look-alike to get camera-ready.
Producer L.T. Hutton, a former Death Row Records producer who worked with Shakur, said he needed to cast a lead actor audiences would believe as Tupac, and Shipp was the one.
...