When we spoke with Tyrese Gibson in 2011, he had finished up the fifth installment of The Fast and the Furious, was preparing to introduce a new album, and loved driving the Maserati GranTurismo. Almost six years later, Gibson is celebrating life as a newlywed while gearing up for the release of Fast 8. He’s also added custom Jeep designer to his portfolio.
Tyrese’s Garage
Gibson’s daily driver is a Rolls-Royce Wraith coupe. “It’s like the greatest car of all time,” he says. “It’s very fast. It’s very quiet.”
He describes it as his dream car and the best vehicle he’s ever driven. The Wraith is painted white but has a black hood.
On the other end of the spectrum is his Sprinter van, which he designed himself. “You know it looks like a private plane on wheels, and that’s the way I designed it,” Gibson says. “It’s not a vehicle I got for transporting big things. It’s a vehicle for me to rock in and, you know, play dates and family fun and trips. It’s the most comfortable option to have us all together in one van.”
Keeping with the extreme theme is his Voltron Rebel Jeep, a customized Wrangler available at VoltronMotors.com. “It’s a V-8 engine supercharged fast as ever,” he says. “It’s an off-road killer.”
Not only does he own the Jeep, but he also helped design it. It all started one day when two modified Jeeps arrived on the set of Fast 8. Intrigued by the unique creations, Gibson partnered with the folks who made them and created a completely new model called the Voltron Rebel Jeep, which he presented at the 2016 SEMA Show in November. Gibson has become the face of the operation.
Upcoming road trip
When he’s not filming for Transformers or The Fast and the Furious, Gibson is watching a different sort of movie: The Notebook. The romantic drama released in 2004 served as the inspiration for his next road trip with his wife.
Gibson got married on Valentine’s Day this year, and he’s taking his wife from Atlanta—where he spends quite a bit of time and where some Fast 8 filming took place—to South Carolina for a getaway in the Sprinter.
“So I’m about to surprise my wife and take her to go see that lake in South Carolina where Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams were on that boat with the swans,” he says. “We looked it up online, and it’s in South Carolina. So I’m going to go take her there to go hang out.”
The scene in Cypress Gardens has become an iconic cinema moment. “Yeah, that’s our favorite movie,” he says.
The Fast and the Furious
In a world where cars jumping out of planes is considered normal, it’s hard to imagine how the most recent Fast movie will outdo the next. Gibson reprises his role as Roman Pearce in Fast 8, which sees Dominic Toretto turning his back on his friends and partnering with a villain named Cipher, played by Charlize Theron. Fast 8 hits theaters everywhere April 14.
“Naturally the stakes are crazier,” he says. “The action scenes are just like nothing anybody has ever seen. You’re going to see a different color, a different side of [Roman Pearce] because you know Dominic Toretto’s character is not just my brother, he’s my family, and we’ve been on all of these missions together. Now suddenly we’re on a mission to try to figure out why he went rogue, and it’s just all so confusing, so it’s like, are we trying to save him from something? We’re just all confused throughout the whole movie, and the audience is going to take the journey with us.”
Of all the cars that have been featured in the Fast and the Furious franchise, his favorite is the orange Lamborghini Murciélago he drove on ice for Fast 8. “We got a bunch of scenes that we shot in Iceland,” Gibson says. “It was 28 below zero. It was just craziness.”
But for Gibson, acting isn’t about stealing the spotlight. It’s about mastering the part he has been given.
“Everybody, you know, in Hollywood we call it real estate,” he says. “Everybody’s fighting for real estate. … I’m like, look, call me when you need me. I don’t need to be No. 1 on the call sheet. I don’t need to be the star of Fast and the Furious. I’m going to do the best I can with whatever I have.”
Other than acting and designing custom Jeeps, one of Gibson’s other ventures includes running a movie production company called Voltron Entertainment. He also says he will release a new book entitled Black Rose, following up on his musical album of the same name.