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Terrence Howard, Crash’s king of cool, on learning how to Hustle & Flow

How did you get involved with Hustle & Flow?
I wasn’t in Hustle & Flow…[laughs]. No, they tried to get me to do the project for about seven or eight months and I refused to read it because of the way it was put to me. I was told, “He’s a pimp and he wants to be a rapper.” I had said around that time that I didn’t want to play any of these type of characters. I want to play characters that are upstanding and I felt like there were so many of those stereotypes being permeated. I said, “Thank you very much, but it’s not what I’m trying to do.”

So how did you end up making the movie?
Stephanie Allain was producing and she cast me in Biker Boyz. It was only a four-day role and she put me up in the Chateau Marmont in my own bungalow for two months! She came to talk to me about the Hustle & Flow script, even though I’d refused to read it before. I eventually read the first page and began to get interested. I flipped through it so quickly and immediately got on the phone to Stephanie to see if the role was still available. She said she always wanted me to play the role because every other person in the world wanted to play him as a stereotypical pimp, and she knew my trepidation meant it would come from an honest place.

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