In an interview with The Art of Dialogue, Omar Gooding spoke about the time he almost got into a physical fight with his Baby Boy co-star, Tyrese Gibson.
Gooding broke down how they fundamentally approached their work on Baby Boy, which was both of their big break in films, very differently. At the time, Gooding believed that he wasn’t there to make friends, whereas Gibson felt that if they were to portray friends onscreen, they should try to do the same in real life. Gibson invited him to his house, which he rejected because it was to read through lines, and he wasn’t eager to work outside of work. So instead, Gooding invited him to his house while he was throwing a party.
“He was just like, ‘Nah, is there any where we [can] go to be alone?’” Gooding said, as seen in the interview above. “I saw the way he was saying it, like, ‘Can we talk real quick?’ … We got in our cars and we drove to a park. … We walked up [a] hill and turned around and squared off. It was like, ‘You got something to say? Get it off your chest. Ain’t nobody around to intervene or talk. Let’s talk like men.’”
Gooding said that Gibson confronted him and said he didn’t “appreciate” how Gooding wasn’t “helping” him with the production of the movie. “The n***a was bucking up,” he laughed. “And I was like, ‘Okay, well this is how I want to get down. What else do you want to do about it?’ And he want, ‘Alright, I’ll see you on set.’” He said they never got into a physical fight, but they came to an agreement because they were professionals.
On set, Gooding said that no one would know they had a rift, but he found out there was an issue later on because he wasn’t invited to the shoot for Snoop Dogg’s “Just a Baby Boy” music video. He said he put two and two together and realized that he wasn’t invited, because everyone else was there. Gooding added that he’s seen Tyrese Gibson plenty of times after that, and while they haven’t spoken about the situation, he doesn’t have any issues with him anymore.
Gooding also “regrets” that he didn’t work closer with his co-star throughout the experience, because he finds that it’s important to be social with people he works with. “Now when I do projects and stuff… I do make an effort more,” he said.
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