Getty Image / Aaron J. Thornton
Actor Terrence Howard, an NAACP Image Award, was the star of Empire on Fox until the show came to an end in 2020 after 102 episodes. He recently spoked about his choice to leave CAA (Creative Artists Agency) over a dispute related to earnings. Most people don’t realize what he was saying because Howard used the interview to debut a new look: silky hair similar to what the Bee Gees band members used to rock.
The show, according to Howard, had 28 million viewers per episode. He told this to Daphne Wynn in a recent interview where he also discusses how CAA agents represented cast members of Big Bang Theory where those cast members were getting paid $2-$3 million per episode while he was only earning $300K per episode.
For what it’s worth, Big Bang Theory rand for 280 episodes compared to 102 for Empire but Terrence Howard’s point is that his former agency and agents were financially incentivized to keep his salary lower. He didn’t expand on how/why they were but it was evidently enough of an issue to drive him away from CAA. And even if he did, nobody noticed because all they could see was his hair:
A clip on X, formerly Twitter, of the interview portion where he discussed CAA went viral. It has nearly 10 million (supposed) views in under 24 hours. But again, nobody heard any of the substance and quality of the interview because the man looks like he just rolled straight out of the Studio 54 night club:
Terrence Howard explains why he's suing CAA (Creative Artists Agency), and says he's owed $120 million because of a package deal CAA had with Fox, which resulted in him getting paid $325,000 an episode for "Empire," while the "The Big Bang Theory" cast was paid $2 million to $3… pic.twitter.com/rOiPxiKWSO
— The Art Of Dialogue (@ArtOfDialogue_) April 7, 2024
Normally, I’d include a bunch of comments from social media from people discussing the topic at hand: Terrence Howard’s silky smooth hair. But I think everyone gets the point. The wig is the only thing seen in this clip.
The most recent Getty Image of Terrence Howard is from December where he was at The Cochran Firm announcing his lawsuit against CAA. He had incredibly short and otherwise normal hair. Unremarkable in any way.
So there’s really no chance this silky hair is his own. It could be a wig. Hair plugs wouldn’t make sense because he didn’t appear to be losing his hair at all to begin with.
Given his past, it wouldn’t be shocking if he took to X/Twitter to explain himself. This is the guy who posted a lengthy ‘mathematical proof’ back in 2017 where he claimed to prove 1×1=2 only to get mocked and clowned on by millions of people:
This is the proof to the World of Science and Mathematics that 1×1=2.#mathematics #worldofscience @rollingstone #proof pic.twitter.com/7uOMrNshia
— Terrence D Howard (@terrencehoward) November 1, 2017
One of the top replies to that is from someone who wrote “This is why you got fired from Iron man 2.”
It will be interesting to see where his CAA lawsuit goes. In the case of the Big Bang Theory cast, the 5 stars banded together to renegotiate in 2015 to $1 million/episode. The show also ran for nearly 3x as many episodes as Empire but if his agents/agency were incentivized to keep him paid less that’s a major problem and it needs to be rectified.
As for the wig + outfit, my best guess is he’s appearing in the upcoming film Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist about an armed robbery during Muhammad Ali’s 1970 fight. He was probably just in costume for whatever that role is. But without any explanation in the clip that went viral on social media it was quite distracting.