Terrence Howard Fumbles the Marvin Gaye Bag

Terrence Howard didn't play Gaye because he couldn't bring himself to play gay, he told Bill Maher on Maher's "Club Random" podcast.

The "Empire" actor was so repulsed by the thought of kissing another man onscreen that he passed up a chance to star in a biopic of Motown icon Marvin Gaye, Entertainment Weekly reported.

In fact, the "Hustle & Flow" star declared, he would have to "cut my lips off" should they touch another man's.

Howard told the tale to Maher while explaining why he had told Smokey Robinson that he would not be available to portray Robinson in a film – namely, he was already talking with director Lee Daniels about playing Marvin Gaye. But that, Howard said, was his "biggest mistake" because he soon started hearing that Gaye was, well, gay.

Maher opined that Howard "would've been perfect as Marvin Gaye, and that is a story that needs to be told."

But not, evidently, by Howard.

"I was over at Quincy Jones' house and I'm asking Quincy, 'I'm hearing rumors that Marvin was gay,' and I'm like, 'Was he gay?'" Howard narrated to Maher. "And Quincy's like, 'Yes.'"

The prospect of portraying queer sexuality made the project a non-starter for Howard, who told Maher that "I wouldn't have been able to do that.... because I don't fake it."

Howard went on to add, "I can't play that character 100 percent," EW reported. "I can't surrender myself to a place that I don't understand."

But it might have been something more than a pursuit of authenticity that turned Howard off about the role. "That would fuck me," Howard declared of having to do a scene featuring a same-sex snog. "I would cut my lips off."

Maher agreed he would not be able to bring himself to kiss another man either, before adding a preemptively defensive declaration that "It does not make me homophobic to not want to kiss a man."

"Gaye, a two-time Grammy winner and songwriting legend, did not explicitly state his sexuality but was married twice in his life, to Anna Gordy 10 years and Janis Hunter for five years," EW noted – though the writeup also recalled Quincy Jones naming Gaye among notable men he claimed had slept with actor Marlon Brando.

"He was the most charming motherfucker you ever met," EW quoted Jones as having said. "He'd fuck anything. Anything! He'd fuck a mailbox. James Baldwin. Richard Pryor. Marvin Gaye."

Watch the exchange below.