The murders of Tupac and The Notorious B.I.G. are about to be brought to light once again in USA's limited series Unsolved, but we're going to see a lot more than just the details of their murder cases.
Josh Duhamel, who plays Detective Greg Kading, tells E! News that while he did as much research on the cases as he could, but his interest in the story went a little deeper than just the facts.
"What I wanted to do and what I think they did a great job of was figuring out how and sort of unpacking what these families went through, losing these two," he says. "Yeah, they were great artists, but they were also sons...and they had a lot of people around them who truly loved them, and how that affected them. And not only that, but how it affected the people who were investigating it."
Duhamel's character, Detective Kading, was an LAPD detective who was best known for leading task forces investigating the murders of Tupac and Biggie. He even wrote a book in 2011 called Murder Rap: The Untold Story of the Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur Murder Investigations. Kading also serves as an executive producer on the series, which also explores the lives of some of the investigators on the cases.
"[Robbery and Homicide detective] Russell Poole, played by Jimmi Simpson, obsessed about this until he died, right up until it basically might have been the reason he died," Duhamel tells us. "My character started to go down the same path, and really truly wanted to bring justice to Christopher Wallace's mother."
Duhamel explains that Kading was intent on getting justice for Biggie's mother.
"He knew what happened, but wasn't able to prove it," Duhamel says. "It's not what you know, it's what you can prove, and that's really what the tragic part of this is, is that real justice was never brought to these families."
The series also stars Wavvy Jonez as Biggie, Marcc Rose as Tupac, Bokeem Woodbine as Officer Daryn Dupree, Luke James as Sean "Puffy" Combs, Aisha Hinds as Voletta Wallace, Jamie McShane as Detective Fred Miller, Brent Sexton as Detective Brian Tyndall, and LeToya Luckett as Sharitha Golden.
Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G. premieres Tuesday, February 27 on USA.
(E! and USA are both part of the NBC Universal family.)