In case there was anyone left out there unclear on whether Danai Gurira, a.k.a. Michonne from The Walking Dead, was indeed the total badass she comes across as, this should put that lingering uncertainty to rest. Deadline reports the actor is set to take on the role of Afeni Shakur, the political activist and mother of rapper Tupac Shakur, in the upcoming biopic of the musician, All Eyez On Me. In unrelated news, this definitely makes some of us wish we had gotten off our butts and spent a little more time hanging out with her in the theater department during our years together at college; although to be fair, the pot in the Midwest during the early 2000s was really strong.
The film, which is already in production in Atlanta (meaning the commute from her hit TV show isn’t too bad), covers Tupac Shakur’s rise to fame as both an artist and actor. It also details both his prison stint and time signed to Death Row Records, which looks at the escalation of the East Coast/West Coast hip-hop feud. Afeni Shakur was a committed member of the Black Panther Party, and the film will likely spend some time exploring how her own struggles helped shaped her son. (And by “likely,” we mean “100 percent will get into that,” because Afeni Shakur is also a producer on the film, and she is not about to ignore her own role in her son’s life.) Gurira, meanwhile, also has her play Eclipsed, starring Lupita Nyong’o, moving to Broadway in March, and another one, Familiar, starting Off-Broadway that same month. In short, don’t try to make any plans with Danai Gurira for the next couple of months, because she’ll be a little busy.