Diddy revealed that he wanted to play “Bishop” in the classic 1992 film, Juice, in place of Tupac.
In an interview posted on rapper Fat Joe’s Instagram page on Jan. 20, Video Music Box host and founder Ralph “Uncle Ralph” McDaniels said Diddy wanted Tupac’s role. McDaniels was one of the producers of Juice.
“When we shot Juice, Andre Harrell was shooting…whatever it is…Puff was working on that. Puff got fired from that movie, and he said, ‘Ralph, you’re working on Juice, I wanna be Bishop. I saw the script. Bishop, that’s me.'” he said. “I was like, ‘We got somebody to be Bishop already. That’s the only one casted as Tupac.'”
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Daniels said that Diddy felt he was the perfect person to play Bishop because the character hailed from Harlem, New York.
“‘Nah, I’m from Harlem, Ralph, just think about it. Think about the script, that’s me.'” he recalled the hip-hop mogul saying to him. “I was like, ‘It’s gonna be hard, that’s gonna be difficult,'”
Then, he added, he remembered approaching another one of the producers with the idea of casting Diddy, but it didn’t pan out.
“I remember going to the producer and just feeling it out, and he was like ‘Absolutely not. We already got Pac. That’s the only person we have. Puff just got fired from Unfinished Business, and we know him. He can’t come on this set.’ So I was like, aight, no problem.”
Earlier in the interview, McDaniels mentioned that he met Tupac on the set of Juice. He also talked about how he ended up as one of the producers for the movie.
“They brought Pac in…he was the only one they casted, and they couldn’t cast nobody else…it was when Hollywood wasn’t really trusted with hip-hop, and people were like ehh, ‘I don’t know is this for real?’ And they were like ‘Yeah yeah no, it’s for real,’ so they brought me in as a consultant to help.”
On Jan. 17, the iconic film turned 30 years old.
Diddy has made cameos in many films, but he only landed two leading roles. One of them was his depiction of Walter Lee Young in the television rendition of Raisin In The Sun (2008). In Get Him To The Greek (2010), he played a record executive named Sergio Roma.
