By Lisa Respers France

CNN

(CNN) -- Jada Pinkett Smith has come a long way from her humble beginnings in Baltimore.

The actress opened up about her relationship with Tupac Shakur when she appeared on SiriusXM's "Sway in The Morning" on Wednesday to promote her new movie "Girl's Trip."

"One of the things that's very interesting that I've never really said before is that when I first met Pac, when we first met, I was a drug dealer."

Smith befriended the late rapper on the first day of high school at Baltimore School of the Arts. The actress told host Sway that it's "kind of hard" because she hasn't "told the whole story" about her relationship with Shakur.

Pinkett Smith said got out of "the life" after "something very bad" happened to her.

But it was just beginning for Shakur, she said.

"As I was coming out of the life, he was coming more into the life," Pinkett Smith said. "I was coming out, he was going in, there was a point at which we met and then we were kind of going our separate ways."

The "Gotham" star said she felt like God saved her from a life of crime and she kept waiting for that to happen for her friend, but it never did.

Most people don't understand what her relationship with Shakur was truly about, she said.

"Pac and I's relationship was about survival," she said. "That's how it started. I know that most people want to always connect it in this romance thing and that's just because they don't have the story."

The star went public in June with her complaints about the Shakur biopic, "All Eyez on Me," which she felt misrepresented her relationship with the late rapper, who was fatally shot in 1996. Pinkett Smith said she recently decided to set those feelings aside.

"A couple days ago I had to just lay that down too and realize this is God's work," she said. "It's not for me to protect his legacy."

Now married to fellow star Will Smith and the mother of their two children (she also co-parents Smith's son from a previous marriage), Pinkett Smith said she plans to write a book about those early years.

"There's a lot of components to our story that we've never shared for a very specific reason," she said. "I just decided that this one little piece was important to share finally because it gives more insight to who we were."