Drama, drama, drama. Terrence Howard spilled all kinds of secrets on the Nov. 14 episode of Watch What Happens Live, including — but not limited to — what really went down between the first and second Iron Man movies, when he was replaced as Lt. Colonel James "Rhodey" Rhodes by Don Cheadle.
"This is going to get me in a lot of trouble," the Best Man Holiday actor told Bravo's Andy Cohen. "It turns out that the person that I helped become Iron Man, when it was time to re-up for the second [movie], took the money that was supposed to go to me and pushed me out."
Howard, 44, didn't name names, but the person who became Iron Man, of course, is Robert Downey Jr.
"We did a three-picture deal, so that means that you did the deal ahead of time. It was going to be a certain amount for the first one, a certain amount for the second one, a certain amount for the third," the Oscar nominee explained to Cohen. "They came to me with the second and said, 'Look, we will pay you one-eighth of what we contractually had for you, because we think the second one will be successful with or without you.'"
(The first Iron Man movie grossed more than $585 million worldwide in its first 14 months. The sequel, Iron Man 2, was the third highest-grossing movie of 2010, and Iron Man 3 has grossed over $1 billion since its release in May 2013.)
Howard said that he tried, to no avail, to get some backup from his pal. "I called my friend — that I helped get the first job — and he didn't call me back for three months," he claimed, prompting the WWHL audience to break into a chorus of disapproving "oohs."
"How are things now with your friend?" Cohen asked.
"Oh, I love him," the star replied dryly, without a trace of a smile. "God's gonna bless him."
Howard also dished on his near misses, romantically speaking, with some very famous fellow stars. At one point in the night, he claimed that Top Chef standout Padma Lakshmi "came on" to him while the two were filming Mariah Carey's 2001 bomb Glitter. But he resisted her alleged advances. "I don't like dominant women," he told Cohen.
One exception? Beyonce. "Her lap dance skills are like a nine. But her spirit and her intent — because I tried to talk to her once, and I missed the opportunity, and she was like, 'This is what you missed' — she's like a 100," he said.
Asked what he meant when he said he "tried to talk to her," Howard elaborated: "We had a meeting. I looked at her, she looked at me, there was the kismet."
And then? "And then I tried to talk to her [friend]," he said.
