The Age of 'Empire'

Behind the scenes with the creators of TV's ruling hip-hop label.

- Carl Swanson

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!”