Terrence Howard missed out on the chance to play both Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye in biopics but for different reasons.
He calls passing on the former the “biggest mistake” of his career, saying on Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast that he declined the offer from Robinson himself because he was already talking with Lee Daniels about playing Gaye in another biopic.
Maher agreed that was the right call, saying Gaye’s life story was “much more interesting” and that Howard “would’ve been perfect as Marvin Gaye, and that is a story that needs to be told.”
But Howard didn’t end up portraying Gaye either.
“I was over at Quincy Jones’ house and I’m asking Quincy, ‘I’m hearing rumors that Marvin was gay’ and I’m like, ‘Was he gay?’” Howard said. “And Quincy’s like, ‘Yes.’”
That was a dealbreaker for Howard, he told Maher.
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“They would’ve wanted to do that, and I wouldn’t have been able to do that,” Howard said of playing a gay man.
Maher asked, “You mean you couldn’t kiss a guy on screen in a movie?”
Howard replied, “No. Because I don’t fake it.”
“That would fuck me,” Howard added. “I would cut my lips off. If I kissed some man, I would cut my lips off.”
The Empire star added, “It does not make me homophobic to not want to kiss a man.”
Howard explained that it was more a matter of committing to the role than anything else.
“I can’t play that character 100 percent,” Howard said. “I can’t surrender myself to a place that I don’t understand.”
Gaye, who was shot and killed by his father in 1984, never publicly came out and was married twice, to Anna Gordy and then to Janis Hunter.
Still, he faced speculation about his sexuality, and it’s been said that he added the “e” to the end of his name in part to dispel such rumors. And in the biography Divided Soul, Gaye is quoted as saying, “Sexually, men don’t interest me.”
Jones, however, made headlines in a 2018 interview when he claimed that Gaye and Richard Pryor slept with Marlon Brando.
Reps for Howard and Daniels have not yet responded to The Hollywood Reporter‘s requests for comment.