“Do what you love, but don’t do it at me, don’t aim it at me.”
That’s Terrence Howard talking about gay men while explaining why he never portrayed singer Marvin Gaye onscreen.
He planned at one point to portray Gaye in a movie helmed by “Empire” executive producer Lee Daniels, Howard told Bill Maher on the “Club Random” podcast released Sunday.
Then he was taken out to dinner and asked to star in a movie about the life of Smokey Robinson — by Smokey Robinson himself. Howard had to turn the “Cruisin’” singer down because he was “being faithful” to Daniels. “I had given my word as a man, I’m gonna do this with you.”
“The biggest mistake I made in my career,” Howard told Maher as the two were getting high together. The actor didn’t say exactly when this went down, but added, “He wanted me to play his life … I had to tell them [no] at the table and it broke his heart.”
But playing Gaye wasn’t to be either. Maher called it “a shame” because he said Gaye’s life story was much more dramatic.
“I’m sorry, drama’s drama, and there’s a lot more drama in getting killed by your dad,” the “Real Time” host said. “That’s a story … that’s much more interesting and Marvin Gaye, like, you would have been perfect as Marvin Gaye. And that is a story that needs to be told.”
Then Howard, who has been married four times, to three different women, decided to explain why he also didn’t play the twice-married “Sexual Healing” singer.
“I was over at Quincy Jones’ house — and I’m not dropping names, I’m just giving credibility about what I’m saying — I’m asking Quincy, I’m hearing rumors that Marvin was gay … and I’m like, ‘Was he gay?’ and Quincy is like, ‘Yes.’”
Insert mic drop here. Gaye told a biographer in 1982 that he wasn’t interested in men and the singer’s younger sister Zeola Gaye was not at all pleased when Jones alluded to her brother’s sexuality in a 2018 interview.
“They would have wanted to do that and I wouldn’t have been able to do that,” Howard said.
“You mean, you couldn’t kiss a guy on screen in a movie?” Maher asked.
“No, ‘cause I don’t fake it,” the Oscar-nominated “Hustle & Flow” actor replied. “That would f— me. I would cut my lips off. If I did that I would cut my lips off.”
After the host admitted that, well, he couldn’t kiss a man either — “It does not make me homophobic to not want to kiss a man,” Maher said, “just like lots of gay men are like, ‘p—, yuck.’” Howard expanded on his reasoning.
“Do what you love, but don’t do it at me, don’t aim it at me,” the actor said. “And I can’t play that character 100%. I can’t surrender myself to a place that I don’t understand.”
The actor, who played patriarch Lucious Lyon for six seasons on “Empire,” declared in 2019 that he was done with acting, “done pretending.” Since then, he’s done eight movies and two miniseries.