Cousins!

Tyrese has always been a fan favorite since the day he dropped vocals on the back of the bus apart of Pepsi ‘s legendary cola commercial. However he says that people weren’t always in love with his dark skin and often used it as a weighing factor against him when it came down to opportunities!

In a recent interview with Leah A. Henry of Leah’s Lemonade , Tyrese revealed that fellow actor #TerrenceHoward would often book roles over him because he was light-skin with colored eyes and deemed more attractive.

“Throughout my whole childhood, it was not cool to be dark-skin in the ’hood,” Terrence says.

“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 continues, “I just did a film with Terrence Howard — we’re 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 Fast and the Furious actor explains, “Terrence Howard has no idea how many roles that I was about to book, and they went with him because he’s the lighter-skinned Black man with the green eyes.”

Tyrese paid homage to actresses actresses Lupita Nyong’o and Viola Davis and their efforts of shifting the narrative within the industry.

Terrence hasn’t addressed the claims publicly.