After being passed over for Iron Man 2, Terrence Howard has spoken out about his friendship with Robert Downey Jr.
The 55-year-old played James Rhodes alongside Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark in the 2008 action film, but Howard was not recast in the sequel, and he has since spoken out about how his and Downey Jr.’s friendship was impacted at the time.
In an interview with Joe Rogan on his podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, Howard muses on the time he appeared in Iron Man and then ‘out of nowhere that gets snatched away’.
READ MORE: Terrence Howard Resigns From Acting: “This Is The End For Me”
“We did a three picture deal with Marvel,” he stated. “A three-picture contract. The first one will cost between $4.5 million and $5 million, the second will cost $7.5-8 million, and the third will cost $12 million. “We signed it.”
Howard alleges Marvel contacted him the week his mother died and told his agent, “We want Terrence, but we want him to come back for a million dollars instead of the eight million that we had agreed to.”
Howard claims his agency had ‘an emotional reaction to a business choice,’ shouted at the Marvel official, and hung up the phone, with Marvel eventually casting Cheadle for the role.
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“But instead, they had to spin, ‘Oh, he was terrible on set and all of these things,'” Howard says, adding that he then decided to phone Downey Jr.
He goes on to say, “I’m phoning him because Susan Downey worked with Joe Silver as a producer on The Brave One (2007) with Jodie Foster.
“She comes over to my trailer and she’s like, ‘Wow it’s so amazing, congratulations on [the first] Iron Man, it’s the first time they’ve hired the second lead before they’ve hired the first.”
She allegedly stated that Downey Jr.’really wanted[ed] to go in but they [wouldn’t] see him,’ so Howard, who claimed to ‘love’ Downey Jr., called the film’s producer and apparently urged them to allow Downey Jr. audition.
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“I said instead of the four-and-a-half you want to give me, why don’t you take a million dollars for the bond for him if he gets it and let him audition.” He stated
Howard recalls Downey Jr. saying he ‘love[d]’ him and thanked him once he landed the role.
“Well, when this other thing happened, I’m calling Robert and he’s doing Sherlock Holmes, I called him 27 times and left a message saying I’m calling his assistant, I’m like I need the help I gave you, and I didn’t hear from him until three years later, when I ran into him at Brian Grazer’s wedding.”
“And at that time I’d had Empire and he was like, ‘Oh everything worked out for you'”
“That broke me a little. But I know how difficult it was for Robert to get out of jail, so if I had to sacrifice myself for that…
Howard later quotes his wife, stating that his acting career would be ‘only a footnote’ in his life, and it does not appear that he has any ill will against Downey Jr.
In 2010, he also commended Downey Jr. to E! Online, stating that Don Cheadle, who played Rhodes, ‘wanted to play that character before [he] did, so everything is really well’.
However, in a 2015 interview with Hollywood.com, he stated that the ‘worst thing he watched was Iron Man ruining [his] career’.
However, he told Desde Hollywood: [Translation] “I admire the fact that Iron Man put me on a global scale and tested my character.
“I elected not to fight back, not to deal with the claims, but to carry on and accomplish what I needed to do. I had to start over: I went from making $6 million per movie to $60 thousand per movie.
“But if you don’t give up, you may… I’ll make $20 million shortly. Because I absorbed the lessons from yesterday.”
Featured image credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images, Paramount Pictures.
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