Cynthia Erivo has joined Universal’s upcoming Snoop Dogg biopic Snoop, taking on the role of Afeni Shakur, the mother of Tupac Shakur. It is a significant addition to a film that is assembling a wide circle of people tied to Snoop Dogg’s life, family and music-world history rather than limiting its focus to a single performer.
Jonathan Daviss leads the film as Snoop Dogg. Camron Jones is playing Tupac, putting Erivo and Jones in roles connected by one of the story’s most important family relationships. Afeni Shakur was not simply a supporting presence in Tupac’s biography: the available background describes her as a prominent Black Panther Party member whose life began as Alice Faye Williams in North Carolina in 1947 before she moved to the Bronx with her mother at age 11.
Erivo’s casting gives the production a decorated performer for a role with political, familial and cultural weight. A Tony, Grammy and Emmy winner, Erivo recently starred as Elphaba in Wicked and Wicked: For Good, and her work as Elphaba brought nominations from the Golden Globes, SAG Awards, Critics Choice Awards, NAACP, BAFTA and the Academy Awards.
A growing cast for the Snoop Dogg story
Snoop is being positioned as a biographical film about Snoop Dogg, described as an entertainment mogul and icon. A biopic is a dramatized feature built around a real person’s life, but that description does not itself establish how much of a subject’s life will be covered or which events will receive the most attention. What is clear from the announced cast is that the film intends to include both Snoop Dogg’s immediate family and several major figures from his professional orbit.
- Jonathan Daviss as Snoop Dogg
- Myles Bullock as Dr. Dre
- Lauren London as Beverly Tate, Snoop Dogg’s late mother
- Camron Jones as Tupac Shakur
- Algee Smith as Warren G
- Tre Hale as Suge Knight
- Laya DeLeon Hayes as Shante Broadus, Snoop Dogg’s wife
- Olly Sholotan as Kurupt
- Corey Champagne as Nate Dogg
- Jonica Booth as The Lady of Rage
- Cynthia Erivo as Afeni Shakur
That roster suggests an expansive supporting ensemble, with performers playing artists, executives and family members whose lives intersect with Snoop Dogg’s. It also establishes that Tupac’s part in the narrative will have a family dimension through Afeni Shakur’s inclusion. The production has not detailed the size of Erivo’s role, the particular period it will cover or the scenes in which Afeni Shakur will appear, so those specifics remain unknown.
Why Afeni Shakur brings a distinct perspective
Afeni Shakur’s own history reaches beyond her connection to her son. She joined the Black Panther Party after hearing Bobby Seale speak in 1968 and married fellow Black Panther member Lumumba Shakur soon afterward. Including her in the film has the potential to recognize that the people around the music scene had personal histories and identities that cannot be reduced to a celebrity association.
The confirmed material does not reveal whether the screenplay will depict these elements of Afeni Shakur’s political organizing or how extensively it will explore them. Still, the casting places a performer playing a notable Black Panther Party member inside a film whose cast also encompasses defining figures from Snoop Dogg’s musical world. That makes the choice more consequential than a conventional cameo casting announcement.
It also provides a useful reminder about what an ensemble can do in a life story. The lead performance may carry the title character’s arc, while supporting roles can make the setting legible: relatives can show the home life around the protagonist, collaborators can show creative relationships, and historical figures can connect the protagonist to a larger moment. Snoop has announced representatives of all three categories, though audiences will have to wait for the film to see the balance it chooses.
Craig Brewer directs from Joe Robert Cole’s original script
Craig Brewer is directing Snoop. His work includes Hustle and Flow and Song Sung Blue. The film is based on a rewrite by Brewer of an original script from Joe Robert Cole, whose credits include Black Panther and Wakanda Forever.
That distinction matters in a straightforward production sense. An original script supplies the initial screen story; a rewrite is a later revision that can reshape its structure, scenes, emphasis or characterization. The announcement does not say what Brewer changed from Cole’s draft, nor does it describe the screenplay’s narrative scope. It does confirm a creative path in which the director has directly worked on the script he will bring to the screen.
Universal has dated the film for a theatrical release on Aug. 6. No further release details are included here, including the year attached to that date, theater rollout plans or ratings information.
Snoop Dogg is producing, and the film will use his catalog
Snoop Dogg is producing Snoop alongside Imagine Entertainment’s Brian Grazer and Allan Mandelbaum, plus Death Row Pictures president Sara Ramaker. The film will incorporate music from Snoop Dogg’s extensive catalog. In practical terms, music is not merely atmospheric in a project about a recording artist: it can help define periods of a career, establish performances and shape the pace of dramatized scenes. The announcement does not specify which songs will be included or how they will be used.
Death Row Pictures is part of the production context as well. Snoop is the first project under Death Row Pictures’ overall deal with NBCUniversal Entertainment and Studios. An overall deal generally describes an arrangement that gives a company or creative entity a continuing relationship to develop projects with a studio group, rather than a one-off connection limited to a single title. For this film, that framework connects the Snoop Dogg-focused production with a larger studio operation.
Ryan Jones, senior vice president of production development, and director of development Tony Ducret will oversee the project for the studio. Oversight is an important behind-the-scenes part of a studio film’s route from development through production, even though the announcement does not outline their particular responsibilities on Snoop.
The film arrives amid continued interest in screen stories centered on entertainment figures and the industries around them. What separates this project, based on its announced personnel, is the degree to which its production setup is intertwined with Snoop Dogg himself: he leads the producing group, the project draws on his music catalog and it begins Death Row Pictures’ deal with NBCUniversal Entertainment and Studios.
Erivo’s work continues across film and television
Outside Snoop, Erivo recently hosted Saturday Night Live: U.K. and is set to executive produce and star in the film adaptation of Prima Facie. That film premiered at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. She also appears in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Children of Blood and Bone, alongside Viola Davis, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Idris Elba, Amandla Stenberg, Damson Idris, Regina King and Lashana Lynch. The film is set to open Jan. 15.
For viewers following film casting across music, television and celebrity culture, this is another example of a project taking shape through specific real-life roles rather than broad casting labels. Erivo is portraying Afeni Shakur; Jones is portraying Tupac; Daviss is portraying Snoop Dogg. Those distinctions are central to the interest surrounding a biographical drama, because audiences will be watching performances that invoke people with well-known public histories.
The next major unknowns for Snoop concern the finished story: how Brewer’s screenplay uses its large ensemble, how Afeni Shakur’s role connects with the film’s portrait of Tupac and Snoop Dogg, and which pieces of Snoop Dogg’s music will frame the narrative. For more entertainment casting and screen-culture coverage, see this look at a creator responding to the public use of a pop-culture character.
