The Breakout: Keeping Cookie Fresh
The team behind Empire is facing a problem the Lyons family knows all too well: How do you follow a hit?
Lee Daniels Slouches down into one of the beige sofas in the lobby bar of the Beverly Hilton, warily eyeing the young man arriving for his shift behind the piano—“He better not! Or we gonna have to move”—and waiting for the margarita he is drinking to kick in. Daniels seems to be in several performative moods at once—ebullience, righteous dudgeon, and confessional intimacy—while keeping an eye on how his listener responds to each. But there is a lot distracting him these days.
He is here on this August afternoon after promoting the triumphal second season of the soapy pop juggernaut he co-created, Empire, before the members of the Television Critics Association, who had assembled, MacBooks open, in the hotel ballroom, to be fed the fall season by the Fox publicity team. Daniels was on a panel with Empire’s showrunner, Ilene Chaiken, best known for creating The L Word; Empire’s producer, Brian Grazer; and Taraji P. Henson, the actress who, by playing the indomitable ex-con ex-wife Cookie Lyons, has become one of the most famous women in America and was recently nominated for an Emmy.
The TCA event is more ritualistic than journalistic, as reporters stand and wait to be handed the mike to recite their questions. One reporter had asked, with exquisite codedness, why it was that “general market audiences” might be so interested in this type of show. “Do you see a little bit of Suge [Knight] in Cookie?” he’d wanted to know. Daniels had responded archly: “There’s a lot of sugar in Cookie!”
この記事は New York magazine の Sep 7–20, 2015 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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この記事は New York magazine の Sep 7–20, 2015 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
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