Tyrese Says It Wasn’t Cool To Be Dark Skinned In Hollywood And That He Lost Roles To Terrence Howard Because He Was Lighter

Tyrese Says It Wasn’t Cool To Be Dark Skinned In Hollywood And That He Lost Roles To Terrence Howard Because He Was Lighter

Tyrese is opening up about his personal and professional struggle with colorism.

Recently the Transformers star posted to his Instagram how he used to be ashamed of his complexion however now, he loves it.

 

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Now, in a recent interview with Leah A. Henry, Tyrese is addressing the post as well as how hard it was growing up in the hood with his dark skin. When asked did he feel that same struggle at the hight of his career, Tyrese said,

“Yeah, it wasn’t easy to be dark skinned in the hood.”

(Photo by Paras Griffin/BET/Getty Images for BET)

Tyrese said that he was called every dark-skin joke and even created some of his own. He continued saying,

“But yea, 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 also said,

“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.” 

The award winning singer said that Terrence told him that the producers informed him that it was Tyrese who suggested him for the role in their new movie called The System. Tyrese added,

“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 ended with,

“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.” 

Lupita Nyong’o at 35th Santa Barbara International Film Festival

Viola Davis at Amazon’s “Troop Zero” Los Angeles Premiere

Do you think colorism still exist in Hollywood? Tell us in the comments.