Film Trivia Fact Check: Tyrese Gibson's sleazy way into Transformers

The internet is filled with facts, both true and otherwise. In Film Trivia Fact Check, we’ll browse the depths of the web’s most user-generated trivia boards and wikis and put them under the microscope. How true are the IMDb Trivia pages? You want the truth? Can you handle the truth? We’re about to find out.

Claim: Tyrese Gibson paid the filmmakers to get him a role in [Transformers]. [Source: IMDb]

Rating: Three Roberto Benigni Pinocchios. Aside from being rude, it’s also inaccurate. The real story is far more bizarre. 

Context: Few movies had a more infamous casting process than Michael Bay’s Transformers. Perhaps no rumored detail is more notorious than that Bay made Megan Fox wash Bay’s Ferrari as an audition. That didn’t happen, though Fox did first work for Bay as a tenth-grader on Bad Boys II, playing a pole-dancing club goer. But the mysterious Transformers casting process gave way to another false IMDb Trivia factoid claiming that Tyrese Gibson paid to be in Transformers.

Transitioning from modeling to singing to acting, he found early success working with John Singleton on Baby Boy and 2 Fast 2 Furious in the early aughts.  Thanks to the long tail of the Fast saga and whatever we’re calling the Transformers universe these days, Tyrese’s movies have generated more than $6.5 billion globally. However, in 2006, Tyrese, coming off a handful of modest hits, was hardly anyone’s first pick for the iconic role of USAF Tech Sergeant Epps. The role hadn’t even been written yet.

Appearing on the All The Smoke radio show in 2023, after wondering aloud if he has told (or should tell) this story publicly, Tyrese put to bed any rumors that he paid money to be in Transformers. Like all stories worth telling, this one begins on a private jet chartered by casino magnates, who are shepherding “75 some celebrities” from L.A. to Vegas for a party at the Palms Casino. While awaiting take off, Michael Bay walks aboard and sits beside Tyrese.

Aware of “exactly who the fuck this guy is,” Tyrese shook Bay’s hand and recalled the time the pair met on the Bad Boys set. After pleasantries, Tyrese turned up the heat and began negging Bay. “I was like, ‘Are you aware of how many people in Hollywood say you’re arrogant?” Tyrese says he asked Bay. It was the last thing Bay expected, but not being the type of guy who makes his actors wash his car, Bay was impressed by Tyrese’s candor. “He was like, ‘Yo, I appreciated you asking me a real question instead of sitting there telling me how much you love the movies I’ve done.’” The pair hit it off, “chopping it up” over identity, perception, and public scrutiny that was “all love.” 

The plane landed and Tyrese went to check in, noticing a horde of Tyrese fans surrounding him “gawking and looking” as Bay walked up positively beaming. Aware of the director’s ladies’ man reputation, Tyrese connected with Bay over a shared love of female objectification, which is about when he starts laying out disclaimers to All The Smoke’s Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson. “Now I’m not going to sit here and say I arranged anything ‘cause I ain’t like that,” said Tyrese, seemingly unaware that the disclaimer makes it seem like he arranged something. Nevertheless, he invited Bay to his room because he had “some girls coming up.” 

Though he was skeptical over whether Bay would take the bait, Tyrese says he had “30 chicks” in his room and maintained “he didn’t tell them they needed to do anything.” He simply told them that if Bay comes up, “y’all got one job and one job only, to make him feel like the most incredible mother fuck you’ve ever met.” He also told them that Bay was known for putting “random women” in Victoria’s Secret ads. He even sexualized a tenth-grader! This guy can make you a star.

Tyrese returns to the disclaimers, saying, “Literally this ain’t no prostitution shit. I don’t play them games,” he told All The Smoke’s iHeart listening audience. What Tyrese does do, however, is a funny Michael Bay impression. (Tyrese affectionately calls Bay “Mr. Miami.”) But as he tells it, the party was just drinks, girls, and good times. However, when Bay showed up, the women went into “full-on flirting.”

The women hit it out of the park because the next thing Tyrese knows, he’s at a Santa Monica Christmas party, and Mr. Miami is telling him that Steven Spielberg is bugging him to make a Transformers movie, talking to Tyrese “as if me saying he should do it is going to actually make him do it.” Tyrese, a self-described life-long Transformer fan, tried to play it cool when Bay asked if he would be interested in a role. Tyrese says Bay wanted him for the Bernie Mac role but ultimately “created the role” of USAF Tech Sergeant Epps specifically for Tyrese.

“We had nothing to do with the storyline. He created the Transformers soldiers that work and rock with Shia LaBeouf’s character, and all that shit happened from an airplane ride and all these women at the fuckin’ hotel.” 

Pay to play? No, just drinks, girls, and good vibes, three things more or less absent from 2007’s Transformers.