Recently, actor and singer Tyrese Gibson has spoken out about what it’s like being a Black actor in Hollywood, where colorism runs rampant, and about losing roles to lighter-skinned actors like Terrence Howard.
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Gibson took to social media and shared a post on Instagram saying that he used to be ashamed of his complexion but now admires it and sees it as the “skin of kings and queens.”
Last week, Leah A. Henry interviewed the Transformers actor interviewed and further dished details on how he was treated differently by Hollywood professionals based on the color of his skin.
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Gibson said, “Yeah, it wasn’t easy to be dark-skinned in the hood.”
He details being made fun of and joked about.
“But yeah, throughout my whole childhood, it was not cool to be dark skin in the hood. It was always the light-skinned black people that seemed to have gotten all the attention and all the love and considered pretty, attractive, or handsome. And since I’ve been in Hollywood, we dealt with the same thing,” he added.
Gibson then talked about a recent experience having handed a role to famous light-skinned actor Terrence Howard.
According to The Jasmine Brand, the movie in which Gibson suggested Howard take the lead role was The System. Howard was made aware of Gibson’s suggestion and thanked him.
“I just did a film with Terrence Howard and were able to joke about it now, but I was the star of the film, and they had an idea to go with someone else, who I won’t mention, and then I suggested Terrence Howard. And he thanked me for like a week straight,” Gibson said.
“I was thinking to myself, Terrence Howard has no idea how many roles that I was about to book because he was the lighter-skinned black man with green eyes,” he continued.
“So it’s crazy to me. I’m number one. I’m the star. I’m this blue-black, you know, all the things I was laughed about in the hood. Then you look at Lupita, you know kind of the Viola Davises of the world, and there is kind of this shift that has happened,” he added.
DEADLINE reported that the Fast and Furious actor produced the upcoming film with Bryan Lord and Petr Jakl.
