Tyrese Gibson on ‘Fast Five’ and ‘Open Invitation’

The world is bursting with Tyrese Gibson. The musician-turned-actor appeared in two of the biggest movies of the year with Fast Five (on DVD/Blu-Ray October 4th) and Transformers: Dark of the Moon (on DVD/Blu-Ray September 30th), has his new album Open Invitation coming out on November 1st, and a New York Times best selling book, How to Get Out of Your Own Way. He took some time out of his busy schedule – at 7:30 in the morning, no less – to talk about why Fast Five was the right movie for him to return to the franchise, his next project with John Singleton and his “proudest R&B album to date.”

CraveOnline: You’ve had a ridiculously big year with both ‘Fast Five’ and ‘Transformers: Dark of the Moon.’ Were you prepared for that?

Tyrese Gibson: Well, I’d be lying if I said that some of this stuff wasn’t planned, but most of it wasn’t. I don’t know, shooting both of those films simultaneously… I just couldn’t believe they allowed me to do it, and scheduled all this stuff around for it to work. Thank god I’m not in every single scene in both movies, because it would have never worked. And, I don’t know, I take the view from the other side of $1.7 billion in box office. My life changed just a little bit. Just a little bit, you know, and having a New York Times Best Seller, with this book How to Get Out of Your Own Way, and I’ve just finished my album, Open Invitation, it’s coming November 1st. I think come December I’m probably going to go to sleep for about two months.

I think you’ve earned it.

Yeah.

Had there been any talk about you coming back to the ‘Fast and the Furious’ franchise before ‘Fast Five?’

Yeah, we tried to figure something out before and it didn’t work out and I was a little disappointed, but I would probably have been mad if I did [Fast & Furious] anyway, because I don’t think it’s as good as Five.

I think that’s fair.

Fast Five was the one to come back for.

Yeah, ‘Fast Five’ kicked ass. I remembered in ‘2 Fast 2 Furious’ one of the things I liked about that movie was your relationship with Paul Walker. It’s one of the most believable “bromances” I’d ever seen.

[Laughs.]

You seemed really close in that film.

[Laughs.] Yeah, I love Paul, man. He’s just such a good dude, and I don’t know, we just laughed and had a great time, and the cameras just so happened to be rolling. Fun times, man. You know what? To be honest, things have been happening in my life and career, man, very, very extreme. I mean, my first time ever acting was in Baby Boy, and to go from Baby Boy to 2 Fast 2 Furious, you go from like an urban hood movie, to like some international film… It’s very extreme, bro. Very, very extreme. I’m in Russia or London, you know… “2 Fast 2 Furious! 2 Fast 2 Furious!” They barely speak English and they know me from the movie. It’s unreal, man. I could never used to this s**t. It’s unreal, man.

You’ve made three films with John Singleton. Are you guys thinking about working together again any time soon?

Yeah, absolutely. I love John. He’s actually putting together a project for me and Taraji [P. Henson] right now.

Can you tell me anything about that? Is it going to be another serious drama?

No, sir. I can’t tell you anything.

Well, what about this… Are you signed on already for a sixth ‘Fast and the Furious’ film?

No, I haven’t officially signed on, but my lawyer’s on line one. [Laughs.]

 

Just sort of a hypothetical here: What do you think Roman Pearce would do if his car turned into a Decepticon?

He would love it. He would love it. Autobot or Decepticon. He would love it.

I was preparing for this interview and just thinking about how cool it would be for ‘The Fast and the Furious’ and ‘Transformers’ to have a cross-over, and Roman Pearce and Master Sergeant Epps got to team up.

That would be pretty crazy. I mean listen, if you can a robot transform you can pretty much do anything with a human. [Laughs.] They can have Epps and Roman Pearce in the same car. [Laughs.] They can shoot that… Even in the movie Social Network, I thought that those two guys were actually twins, and it was one person. […] I was like, “How the f**k did they do that?” [Laughs.] So they can definitely get Roman and Epps pulled off, please believe. I just hope Roman Pearce has enough room in his front seat for the guns that Epps has.

You have your own comic book, ‘Mayhem.’

Mayhem. Yes, sir.

Has there been any talk about turning that into a movie, or doing another series?

Yeah, there was talk… Pretty heavy talks around the time when we were full throttle on Mayhem. We kind of pumped the brakes on it. [There was] some internal stuff that needs to be figured out. But, you know, I was so inspired the comic book community, I just had to not only just say, “Oh wow, I love this world” – because I didn’t grow up reading comic books, I became a fan after I kept going to Comic Con to promote movies. I was like, “What the hell is the big deal about these comic books?” So I started getting into it and wrapping my head around… Instead of me coming to Comic Con to promote my movies, I could go ahead and add to the culture. So that’s how Mayhem was created.

 

What else do you have coming up on the horizon, movie-wise?

Well, right now the focus is really my album. There’s no other super releases towards the end of this year. We just got the DVD for both films [Fast Five and Transformers: Dark of the Moon], so I’m kind of making the rounds to help promote and get the energy out there for the release of these DVDs. But the focus for me mainly is the album. My album is coming November 1st, it’s called Open Invitation, and it’s my proudest R&B album to date. I’ve already shot three videos, and we got two songs that were #1 added to radio in the country. I’ve got my single “Stay,” and Taraji P. Henson is my leading lady in the video. Have you seen the trailer to “Stay?”

No, actually I guess I haven’t.

It’s on YouTube, man. You should check it out. We did a trailer to my actual video. We had two actors in it, and it’s a music video, so we had to go an make it into a mini-movie. […] The other music video is for a song called “Too Easy” featuring Ludacris. So we just shot that. There’s a lot of good energy going on with the music right now.