In a lengthy interview on Straight Talk with Daphne Phaneē, Terrence Howard opened up about his lawsuit against Creative Artists Agency (CAA) while in costume for his new limited series Fight Night.
Late last year, Howard filed a lawsuit against CAA over accusations they "low-balled" him when it came to negotiating his salary on Empire. "I had an issue at Fox and Disney because…the image that you see of us on Empire, profile, that came from a still shot from Hustle & Flow," Howard said around the 1:03:00 point of the interview, seen above. "They took that, flipped that, and put it on everything. They took the trademark of it, sold it around the world, didn’t ask my permission…That image is worth $100 million at least for how much money that they made from it."
He later argued that he should have been making as much money per episode of Empire as the cast of The Big Bang Theory.
"CAA, they represented me. They also represented some of the people from Big Bang Theory. They also did the deal with Fox," he continued. "My show was with Fox, the people from Big Bang was with Fox. We had 28 million viewers. They had 11 million viewers. They were getting $2 million, damn near $3 million an episode. Those white kids, they had no name recognition, no Oscar nominations, none of that."
Howard, who garnered an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his role in Hustle & Flow, said he earned $325,000 an episode of Empire. "Every year I'm asking my agents what's going on... I didn't know [about the] packaging deal, my agents were incentivized to keep my pay low so... They owe me over $120 million based on what would have been paid to white counterparts."
When he asked about the money he's allegedly owed, they sent him a check for $666. "So I was like, 'Oh, y'all trying to threaten me.' This is a threat," he said. "Y'all think I'm scared? Y'all think I'm going to be quiet about this? Because I wonder what you're doing to every other Black artist." He added that he wanted to "retire" from Hollywood with the money he's owed, but since he hasn't gotten any of it he doesn't yet have an opportunity to do so.
Howard has at least one major project on the horizon with the Peacock limited series, Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist. If you're wondering why the actor is sporting that fabulous wig in the interview, it's because he recorded the chat from the set of the series.
At the start of the chat, he was asked why he was wearing such a wig and replied, "This ain't no wig, this my hair." After laughing off the moment he explained that it's his character from the series, Cadillac Richie. Fight Night is focused on a robbery that went down during Muhammad Ali's 1970 comeback fight in Atlanta, hence the very '70s getup he's sporting. He co-stars in the project with Kevin Hart, Don Cheadle, and Samuel L. Jackson.
What led him to conduct the interview with the wig still on, however, remains to be seen. Maybe it really is his real hair? Is he going method?
Either way, it was enough to get noted Terrence Howard fan Earl Sweatshirt to suggest J. Cole apologizing to Kendrick Lamar is a distraction from the real news. "They created all this hullabaloo to distract you from the new terrance Howard interview," he tweeted.
