FX’s critically acclaimed Dear Mama premiered to the largest audience of any unscripted series in FX’s history. The docuseries comes from executive producer, writer, and director Allen Hughes and focuses on the lives of Tupac Shakur and his mother, Afeni.
Dear Mama debuted on April 21, 2023, with new episodes of the five-episode series airing on Fridays at 10pm ET/PT.
“It’s only fitting that Allen Hughes’ definitive piece on Tupac and Afeni Shakur delivered a record performance for us, and it speaks to Tupac’s enduring legacy,” stated Nick Grad, President, FX Entertainment. “Allen’s examination of Tupac viewed through the prism of his mother Afeni is a fascinating take that really gets beneath the education and experience that shaped his life and inspired him to become one of the greatest artists ever.”
Additional executive producers include writer Lasse Järvi, Quincy Delight Jones III (QD3), Staci Robinson, Nelson George, Charles King, Peter Nelson, Adel “Future” Nur, Jamal Joseph, and Ted Skillman.
Dear Mama Synopsis, Courtesy of FX:
From Allen Hughes, the award-winning director of critically acclaimed The Defiant Ones, comes FX’s Dear Mama, a deeply personal five-part series that defies the conventions of traditional documentary storytelling to share an illuminating saga of mother and son, Afeni and Tupac Shakur.
Afeni Shakur was a revolutionary, an intellect, and a voice for the people. She became a feminist darling of the ’70s, a female leader in the movement amidst the macho milieu of the Black Panther Party. Tupac was a rapper and poet, a political visionary and philosopher who became known as one of the greatest rap artists of all time. In addition to becoming a global sex symbol and media favorite for his outspoken and sometimes outrageous antics, he would eventually become the poster child for modern Black activism.
Their story chronicles the possibilities and contradictions of the United States from a time of revolutionary fervor to Hip Hop culture’s most ostentatious decade.
FX’s Dear Mama is both an audio and visual experience. Tupac’s timeless message is undeniable as beats evaporate into soundscapes and his lyrics revealed to be mantras of passion and politics. It eschews strict chronology for a style that slides back and forth in time, finding linkages between mother and son, 1970s and 1990s, Black activism and Hip Hop, that highlight how much has and has not changed in the struggle for human rights. Through this technique, the eras speak to each other and melt time away, shifting the dual narratives into one definitive portrait of a global superstar and the woman who shaped him, forever linked by love and fate.
