Terrence Howard, the Oscar-nominated actor who once claimed that one times one equals two, has found another thing he can’t compute: kissing a man onscreen.
Speaking to Bill Maher on the host’s Club Random podcast, Howard said that the “biggest mistake” of his career was turning down the lead role in a potential Smokey Robinson biopic, something he did because he was already in talks with Empire cocreator Lee Daniels about playing another musician.
That would be “Sexual Healing” and “What’s Going On” singer Marvin Gaye. Though Gaye had straight relationships—he married twice before his death at age 44—he’s also faced speculation about his sexuality. “I was over at Quincy Jones’s house,” Howard told Maher, “and I’m asking Quincy, ‘I’m hearing rumors that Marvin was gay.’ And I’m like, ‘Was he gay?’ And Quincy’s like, ‘Yes.’” (In a 2018 interview with Vulture, Jones alleged that Gaye was one of several famous men who slept with Marlon Brando: “He’d fuck anything. Anything! He’d fuck a mailbox. James Baldwin. Richard Pryor. Marvin Gaye.”)
Once Howard learned this information, he could no longer entertain the idea of following through with the project. “They would’ve wanted to do that, and I wouldn’t have been able to do that,” said the actor.
Maher then said, “You mean you couldn’t kiss a guy onscreen in a movie?” Howard replied, “No, because I don’t fake it. That would fuck me. I’d cut my lips off. If I kissed some man, I would cut my lips off.”
Howard maintained that he bowed out of the project because he knew he wouldn’t be able to fully “play that character 100%—I can’t surrender myself to a place that I don’t understand.”
The actor’s comments echoed controversial remarks that he made on the PBD Podcast earlier this month. “I’ve lost businesses because I don’t bend over in that way. I don’t compromise. I don’t play gay roles. I don’t kiss a man,” said the Iron Man star. “I don’t do that shit because the man card means everything.”
There have been multiple attempted Marvin Gaye biopics over the years, involving stars like Lenny Kravitz and Law & Order’s Jesse L. Martin, as well as Straight Outta Compton filmmaker F. Gary Gray. Vanity Fair has reached out to reps for Daniels for comment on Howard’s version of events.
Elsewhere on the podcast, Howard revealed that he was on board with Donald Trump until the president carried out mass deportations—in the exact way Trump said he would while running for reelection. “I was all in his corner,” Howard said. But “that right there, that hit me. I was like, Dude, you can’t do that to somebody’s family. You cannot do that. Bring them home.”
Maher, who has received criticism from figures such as Larry David for praising Trump as “gracious and measured” after visiting with the president late last month, agreed with Howard’s stance. “You just can’t send American citizens…right to a prison, and not just a prison—a gulag,” Maher said.
Want more off-the-cuff remarks from Howard? You’re in luck. The actor recently told TMZ that he plans to launch his own Hollywood-centered podcast, which he described as a “studio’s nightmare and every actor’s wet dream.”
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