Terrence Howard has drawn a line regarding what he will and won’t do onscreen, revealing that he’d never kiss a man for an acting role and hyperbolically insisting he’d “cut his lips off” if he were forced to do so.
The conversation arose on Club Random with Bill Maher as Howard and Maher discussed potential roles the Oscar-nominated actor could take on, including Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye and the son of Billy Dee Williams. Howard shared that his biggest career mistake was passing on starring in a biopic about Robinson due to a verbal commitment with Lee Daniels to star in a Marvin Gaye biopic. While neither project came to fruition, Howard claims that the late Quincy Jones once confirmed to him that Gaye was a closeted homosexual. For Howard, that ended discussions of him playing the R&B icon.
“I’m asking Quincy, I’m hearing rumors that Marvin was gay…and I’m like, ‘was he gay?’ And Quincy’s like, ‘Yes.’ They would’ve wanted to do that, and I wouldn’t have been able to do that,” Howard said of portraying a gay relationship onscreen as Marvin.
Terrence Howard at the 54th NAACP Image Awards held at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium on February 25, 2023 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images)
“You mean you couldn’t kiss a guy in a movie?” Maher asked, to which Howard replied, “No, because I don’t fake it.” Maher then agrees that he wouldn’t kiss a man for a gig either, as Howard adds, “that would f**k me, I would cut my lips off.”
“Well, I would not do that,” Maher replied, “but it does not make me homophobic to not want to kiss a man.”
The pair also discuss Howard, “clashing with studios over money, why Empire was both a blessing and a headache,” and “swap stories about celebrity parties and canceled careers,” as well as several other topics. Check out the full episode — timestamped to their biopic discussion — below.
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