Wicked Star Cynthia Erivo Will Play Tupac’s Mom in Snoop Dogg Biopic

Cynthia Erivo, who you probably know best as Elphaba from the movie adaptation of Wicked, will play Afeni Shakur in the upcoming Snoop Dogg biopic Snoop . The movie started filming in September 2026, with Jonathan Daviss playing a young Snoop Dogg.

Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg reportedly first met on the set of the 1993 movie Poetic Justice and collaborated on tracks for Tupac's All Eyez on Me album.

Last month, Erivo explained how she chose her roles as an actress. "I feel like I have an internal metronome that tells me when something is right for me and when something is not," she told Hollywood Reporter . "I say no to a lot of things."

As well as being Tupac's mother, Afeni Shakur was a member of the Black Panther Party and an activist. After her son's death in 1996, she created the Georgia-based Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation for young people interested in the arts and founded record label Amaru Entertainment to pulish her son's previously unreleased music.

The movie is scheduled for release on August 6, 2027.

Rachel Weber is the Head of Editorial Development at IGN and an elder millennial. She's been a professional nerd since 2006 when she got her start on Official PlayStation Magazine in the UK, and has since worked for GamesIndustry.Biz, Rolling Stone and GamesRadar. She loves horror, horror movies, horror games, Red Dead Redemption 2, and her Love and Deepspace boyfriends.