As it turned out, working with Tatum was an enlightening experience for Howard. "He reminded me of who I wished I was when I was 21, 22, because he’s in a great position, and he’s still very light. He doesn’t carry any of his demons on his skin," explained Howard at the LA press day for Fighting. "It took me a long time to know to leave the demons inside of a refrigerator someplace. You know, and thaw them out when you need them. He’s managed to do that so early on, that he comes to set, and he’s so free. And he doesn’t have to have this big bag of badness with him. He’s so great, and I love that about him. I absolutely love that, you know? I think he’s going to be one of the most fantastic actors on the planet, by the end of 20 years of sitting there playing the way he’s playing now. The fearlessness, the roles that he’s taking."
"You know, [writer/director] Randall Wallace showed me something that he’s doing with Channing, and there’s a presence that Channing has. I think it’s just being genuine. It’s being genuine. I bumped into an actor last night, Oscar winner. Great. Grammy-nominated, Grammy-winner, but the quality of life wasn’t there. The quality of spirit, the quality of inquisitiveness."
Summing up his co-star, Howard said, "He has no ego whatsoever. He has no ego."
Another of Howard's Fighting co-stars, Zulay Henao, had a few things to say about working with Howard on the film. Henao described Howard as a very intense actor, and she's not the first person to use that adjective when talking about the 40 year old actor. Asked where that intensity comes from, Howard explained his philosophy on life and acting. "I ride life, you know, like it’s a beautiful go-cart. In real life, me and my friends, we’ll get out there, and we’re gonna make a go-cart. And you spend so much time finding pieces to make the go-cart. And sometimes it don’t work. But then all of a sudden, you’ve got a go-cart that’s working. And right when you start riding down the hill, your mother calls you and tells you you gotta come in. The little boy has to stop, right then, in there. And he comes in, and he’s angry, and he’s sullen in his face. I’m having such a great time in my life right now. I’m making go-carts, you know? And then when they call me and make me come to work, I walk in there, and I slam doors, and I do all those things, you know, that a little bad kid would do."
Playing Harvey was an interesting task for Howard as the character is corrupt yet somehow sympathetic. "He’s got a mean streak of morality running up his spine, you know? He’s like remember Val Kilmer says as Doc Holliday in Tombstone, it’s like, 'My hypocrisy only goes but so far.' Remember? And later on he says, 'My hypocrisy seems to have no bounds.' Harvey, his hypocrisy only went but so far. He could – you can cheat somebody on the streets. He didn’t like fighting. He couldn’t take a person’s life, but he didn’t help people live. So he’s at that strange place between good and bad, where he’s not good, so he’s definitely bad, but doesn’t want to accept that he’s bad if you’re not doing the right things. And that bothered him constantly, because he knew he was more decent than that."
Terrence Howard on Future Projects and One That's No Longer in His Future
"We’re doing – me, Laura Ziskin, and Tom Schulman, who[...]wrote Dead Poet’s Society, we’re about to do a film called Morgan’s Summit where I go back into the lead," revealed Howard. "I’m about to do Macbeth, which we’re producing. We’re going to do that this summer. And then Chevalier and Antoinette, another film I’m producing."Howard says Morgan's Summit is one of the most impressive scripts he's ever read. "Tom Schulman wrote Dead Poet’s Society and he heard me on NPR and asked me to come in, and we began talking about what he wanted to accomplish. The script, the characters in the script are so, so beautiful. It’s so beautiful. I mean, I’m not even going to spend the time talking about it today. But, Morgan’s Summit is an incredible – it’s the film that I’ve been waiting for, you know?"
One film we won't see Howard in is Iron Man 2. Although he was a major part of the first Iron Man movie, directed by Jon Favreau and starring Robert Downey Jr, he was replaced in the second film by Don Cheadle. Asked what really happened behind the scenes that caused him to part ways with the franchise, Howard answered, "Iron Man happened with that. Marvel happened with it. They made a choice. They made a very, very bad choice. They didn’t keep their word. They didn’t honor a contract. They sent everyone out into a field and told them to work and produce a great bounty. And you produce a great bounty. And then when it’s all in the storehouse, you are not allowed into the storehouse."
Howard added, "They did the same thing with Gwyneth [Paltrow], from what I’ve been told. You know, they did it with almost everyone, I think, except Downey, throughout the thing. But one of the things that actors need to learn to do is take a tip from Friends. You always choose to stick together, you know? One for all and all for one. Our gang, you know? Let Spanky be our rule."
So, will Howard watch Iron Man 2 when it arrives in theaters next summer? "Yeah, I’m definitely looking forward to it. I want to see what happened with that. I want to see Don Cheadle become me," said Howard. "I want him to do better than me. That’s what I really want to see. You know? And I think he can. Don Cheadle was – he’s the reason I got Crash. You know, he was one of the producers on Crash, and he called and got me in there. So it’s like, Don is good by me, anything he does."
