Stop right there: Johnny Depp in City of Lies
Credit: Alamy
They told him to get a burner phone, to cover the camera on his computer – and to watch his back. It was 2015 and Brad Furman’s efforts to bring to the screen the story of the police investigation into the killings of rappers Tupac Shakur and Christopher “Biggie” Wallace, aka the Notorious BIG, was leading the director down some dark avenues.
Out of the blue, an old colleague connected to the Los Angeles Police Department had reached out, advising that Furman proceed cautiously. Powerful people in LA didn’t want the truth about Tupac and Biggie seeing light of day. “I already knew I was going to be banging up against the police in making this movie and that’s something I had to accept in service of the truth and justice,” Furman (The Lincoln Lawyer, The Infiltrator) would tell the Daily Beast. “The threat was real since day one and I decided back then I couldn’t let anything bully me, or this story. But the insanity of this situation is at a point where I walk into my home alone, I find myself like a 13-year-old kid, checking my doors.”