Terrence Howard: "I Choked" at Oscars 2015, Was Distracted By Oprah
Is it funny yet? Last month, Terrence Howard took the stage at Hollywood's Dolby Theatre to present nominees for the Best Picture category at the 87th Annual Academy Awards, and in his own words, completely "choked."
The Empire star, 45, addressed the blunder in a new interview with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show on Monday, March 2.
"I was worried about you for a second," host Fallon, 40, began. "Can I just talk about the Oscars for a second?"
Burying his head in his scarf and covering his eyes as Fallon broached the subject, Howard muttered "no," before shedding some light on exactly what went down.
"I'm at the Academy Awards," began Howard, who was nominated for his own Oscar for 2005's Hustle & Flow. "I mean, I got Meryl Streep, I got all these dope, the best actors in the world, and they're up there reading [from] the teleprompter. I was like, 'Man, I can memorize that!' So everybody that went up there, I'm clowning them. I'm clowning, I'm talking to my wife, 'Look at this, man, I can do better than that, wait until I go up there! Watch this, watch till I go up there!'"
When it was finally his turn to take the stage, in a moment that has since become infamous, Howard spoke so bizarrely and slowly that social media users questioned if he was under the influence of something.
"I walk out there and, um, first and foremost, I forgot to wear a belt that day," Howard explained. "So, I'm pulling it up, I'm like, 'It's okay, my stomach will hold it up.'"
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"I get out there and I'm breathing and I got this memorized, I've worked 18 hours to work this out, I'm 'bout to kill it," he continued. "I get out there… there's Oprah! 'Hi Oprah… Oh, oh, read the lines, read the lines.' I try to look up and I'm like, 'No, I worked on this, I'm not going to read the prompter, I'm going to say it from heart'… I choked!"
Fallon then had Howard sit through the painfully awkward moment, giving a running dialogue of what he was thinking as he spoke. Watch Howard's narration of the presentation in the video above!
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