“Game time, bitches.” That how Empire’s first, blockbonkers (that’s blockbuster + bonkers, heh) season ended last spring.
It’s a testament to a series this brazen and this confident in barreling its plot forward at gunshot speed that, by the end of Wednesday’s Season 2 premiere, Terrence Howard’s Lucious Lyon makes the opposite pronouncement: “Game over, bitches.”
How does the most successful TV series in over a decade, a wildly popular hip-hop soap opera with Shakespearean ambitions, possibly live up to the precedent it set: combating homophobia, damning the idea that “black TV” can’t be mainstream TV, and creating a nation of Cookie addicts?
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“Everyone was always asking about the pressure and I was really trying not to get caught up in it and keep the process the same as it was last year,” says Empire co-creator Danny Strong, who also co-wrote Wednesday’s Season 2 premiere, deliciously titled “The Devils Are Here.”
“I think we’ve done it,” Strong says. And it would be hard to disagree.
The bombast, the endlessly quotable dialogue, the ferocious performances, the resonant themes, and the simmering epic-ness that came to define the first season of Empire and spark its unprecedented week-by-week build in popularity all somehow shine together again, like blinding pieces of bling clashing beautifully on one of the Lyons’ ostentatious outfits.
It’s the trademark of the series: the wild plotting and rapid character development seems haphazard, but it is beautifully controlled. And it’s because of this that “The Devils Are Here” resists the temptation to take the bait for more outrageous and soapier drama. Instead, it feels as if the show is continuing the mission of Season 1, not having missed a single booming beat.
We pick up three months from where Season 1 left off.
Lucious is still in jail, but pulling the puppet strings at his record label, where he made Jamal (Jussie Smollett) his successor after making peace with his homosexuality. Cookie (Taraji P. Henson), her two sons Andre (Trai Byers) and Hakeem (Bryshere Y. Gray), and her nemesis Anika (Grace Gealey) are staging a hostile takeover of the company, pissed that Lucious betrayed them.
But to keep up appearances—and to keep positive attention on Empire Records while Lucious is in jail—Cookie stages a massive #FreeLucious concert in a park, which, aside from serving as a venue for some great musical performances is the stage for Cookie to deliver a rousing monologue about police corruption, black male incarceration, and issues that have become tentpoles of the Black Lives Matter movement that has raged over the past year.
Cookie has the audience on its feet. Henson’s rich, explosive performance likely had viewers there, too:
“How much longer are they going to treat us like animals? The American correctional system is built on the backs of our fathers, our brothers, our sons. How much longer? It is a system that must be disassembled piece by piece if we are going to live up to those words that we recite with our hands on our hearts: Justice for all. Not justice for some, but justice for all.”
It’s the opening salvo in round two of Empire’s larger mission: being a populist, entertaining show, but still saying something important.
Not that it’s all heavy or maudlin. We’re quickly introduced to a crackling guest performance by Marisa Tomei, who clearly relishes every second of it. She plays a wealthy lesbian inventor named Mimi Whitehead. We are here for this. She’s enlisted by Cookie to help with the hostile takeover, but double-crosses her and sides with Lucious instead.
Yep. “Game over, bitches.”
It’s not all victory for Lucious, though, whose rule as prison royalty is threatened by the arrival of Frank Gathers, a juicy performance by guest star Chris Rock. Gathers has a vendetta against Lucious—Cookie is the one who sold him out—and orders his goons to kill him: “Make it fast and make it quiet.”
But Lucious is always a step ahead and turns the tables on Gathers. He’s already recruited Gathers’ crew to his side, and they’re going to do him in instead: “Make it loud and make it long.”
The rest of the episode, though killer, zips by far too fast.
There’s a monumentally funny exchange between Cookie and Anika when Mimi betrays them: “I thought I told you to sleep with her.” “I did.” “You can’t even dyke right.” And a gloriously random array of guest stars—in addition to Tomei and Rock, Al Sharpton, André Leon Talley, Kelly Rowland, Ludacris, and Becky G appear in the first two episodes—has your favorite Fox drama pulling double duty as some deranged version of Hollywood Squares.
Now that Season 2 is finally here, we got on the phone with Strong to talk through the episode’s big twists, the big themes of the new season, the fallout of the hostile takeover, and so much more. Game time, readers.
The episode premieres with quite a statement: the #FreeLucious concert where Cookie descends to the stage dressed as a gorilla in a cage and delivers that big monologue, “How much longer?” Last year you talked about issues that were on your agenda to tackle in the first season. Are incarceration and police corruption ones we can expect to play a part in Season 2?
Absolutely. We’re living during Ferguson and Michael Brown. We’re in a very high point in American race relations, particularly with police harassment. We definitely felt like we needed to dive into those issues on the show. We felt like that’s what’s happening in America right now so let’s talk about it.
When you have a show like Empire and you see this happening in the news, do you feel a responsibility to work it into the show?
I don’t know about responsibility. Because at the end of the day you need to write and tell stories that you’re excited and passionate about. I think there’s been all sorts of incidents like this for many years. As long as this country’s been a country. However, there’s been a wave of them in the past year. It just felt like we were all angered by it. By “we all” I mean me, Ilene Chaiken, Lee Daniels, and the writing staff. It felt organic to talk about it on our show.
Was Taraji excited to get to recite that speech?
I think she was. She killed it. She’s fantastic in the speech.
It must’ve been a little disappointing that she didn’t win the Emmy on Sunday. But Viola Davis gave that amazing speech about how opportunity is needed for equality to happen, and you must feel proud to be part of a show that’s giving those opportunities.
Look, of course I was disappointed Taraji didn’t win. I love Taraji. She’s a dear friend of mine and she’s on our show. But I thought Viola Davis’s speech was beautiful and powerful and a really moving moment. Taraji said this on Ellen yesterday morning, when she talked about how, in 2015, it’s time that we are done with the phrase “the first African-American to do…” I think she’s absolutely right. Also, for Taraji to lose to such a genius actress as Viola Davis certainly takes some of the sting out of it, too. For everybody. We all love and admire Viola Davis so much.
And then for Viola to give that speech, too.
The speech was just amazing. It was a gorgeous speech. Like I said, it’s important and I’m so glad she said it. One more thing on that: I hung out with Taraji right afterwards, later that night. And she was so cool. She just didn’t seem upset. She seemed genuinely happy for Viola. She had a great attitude about it.
Were you bummed that Empire didn’t get more notice at the Emmys, given how big it is and how so many pundits thought it was going to get more love?
Yeah. I don’t think that the show deserved Emmy nominations because it’s so successful. I don’t think that awards are based on how successful they are. Awards are based on an organization feeling as if they want to reward excellence and the programs they think deserve that. The fact that we’re a big hit doesn’t, in my opinion, make us entitled to get awards. I had no clue if it would be an awards contender or not going into the awards season. I always felt that I wouldn’t be surprised either way.
I knew that Taraji was going to [be nominated] because that performance is undeniable. But it was either going to be just Taraji or a bunch of nominations. I had no idea. We have a lot of really juicy soap turns in our show, which isn’t traditional awards bait. And then when all of a sudden we started getting nominated for various critics’ awards I thought, “Oh I guess we are an awards season contender.” So I’m bummed to say that I got suckered into thinking we were. Because I didn’t know. I just wasn’t really going there and thought it could go either way. So I felt a little sucker punched when the nominations came out. But I’ll be honest, in about an hour I was totally over it.
If not awards, one true byproduct of the show’s popularity last year is this season’s array of guest stars. The premiere has Marisa Tomei and Chris Rock. I mean, Chris Rock! How did that come about?
He called Ilene Chaiken about a writer that he was recommending to her. Then he said to her that he’d like to be on the show. And Ilene and I co-wrote that first episode and she immediately thought of him for the part.
He was up for it?
Oh yeah. He only wanted to be on the show if it was something twisted and different, I think.
I don’t think we’ve seen Chris Rock play a gangster in prison before.
Yeah. We thought it was pretty cool casting to go against type for that part. I’ve seen Chris in a play called The Motherfucker With the Hat. He was fantastic in it. There was something dangerous about his performance in that play, so it made me think this could be a pretty cool piece of casting.
It’s an important character, too. His arrival and especially that showdown scene makes it look like Lucious is about to be brought down. And as an audience member, you’re rooting for him to brought down. But he always has a card in his back pocket that he’s ready to play to be back in a power.
It’s pretty cool, huh, that twist at the end?
Yes! But why do you think that as an audience member you’re rooting for Lucious’s demise?
Because he’s a killer villain. He’s the devil! He’s the devil incarnate.
But he’s also the show’s lead character.
Yeah. And that’s pretty cool! I think Terrence Howard brings a real likability and heart to Lucious. I mean his name’s Lucious for a reason, which I think oddly keeps you on his side at times, too. Like you said, you’re rooting for him to get brought down but when he undoes [the plot against him], it’s really satisfying. We had this big premiere at Carnegie Hall and when Lucious pulled the fast one on Frank Gathers, the audience went insane in applause. They were so happy that Lucious got out of it. It’s that thing where you love him and you hate him, and I think that’s what makes him a dynamic, interesting character.
“Make it loud. Make it long.”
Right!? The audience was going crazy screaming and applauding during that scene.
How do you guys churn out these catchphrases—“Game over, bitches.” “Make it loud. Make it loud.”—at the rate that you do?
I think it’s the sort of the voice of the show. When you know that the voice of the show has this heightened hip-hop meets Shakespeare feel, it’s actually really fun to write. I love writing that kind of dialogue because you can’t do it often. In most cases it’s not going to fit in what you’re doing. It’s going to sound corny or too big or over the top. But in the vernacular of our characters and our world it fits right in. So it’s actually quite a lot of fun to do.
The other line that I responded to a lot in the premiere is when Jamal is kicking Cookie out of the office and tells her, “You done now, lady.” It signals this upsetting transformation of Jamal, where he’s becoming Lucious. But then he breaks down right after, showing that he’s still resisting that evolution. What’s going on with Jamal now?
It was always in the original pitch that Lee and I did to networks, in which we said he was going to have a Michael Corleone-esque arc. He was going to go from the underdog to the person running the empire, but it was going to corrupt him. That was always our intention and we’re just fulfilling how we always saw it.
How does that arc interplay with the storyline of Jamal’s coming into his own as an out gay public icon. He’s ascending the Empire throne and becoming more powerful, but he’s also becoming a gay public figure, which is something he seems to be a little bit hesitant about.
Attacking homophobia was such a big part and major theme of Season 1. We played it very brutally and in your face and in a way that we thought was really powerful. Now we’re going to shift it. We’re not going to keep doing the same thing we did last season. So we’re not done talking about gay issues, but now we’re shifting it and talking about different elements of gay issues. This season we’re going to be talking about sexuality in, I think, a very interesting way. It’s going to go away from the blunt, “Look at Lucious Lyon, he won’t accept his son, he’s a monster for it.” We got it. We got that story. We got through Lucious’s arc by the end of the season when he comes to accept his son so that he can rise in the empire. Now it’s time for us to discuss other things in this world.
We mentioned police brutality at the beginning of the conversation. Last year attacking homophobia was part of your agenda. Are there other issues you’re setting out to tackle this year?
Yeah, but I kind of don’t want to talk about them. I just want them to unfold in the story. Does that make sense? I don’t want to give anything away.
There is a fun laugh line at the #FreeLucious concert where Cookie is asked if Bill Clinton is there and she responds, “He needs to be if he wants his wife to get elected.” I love it when real-world politics are introduced the Empire world. Is there going to be more of that?
It’s hard to do because everything changes so much in politics so fast. So if we did some kind of Donald Trump joke, who knows where Donald Trump’s going to be by the time the thing starts airing? That one was pretty safe. We knew Hillary Clinton was running for president. So it certainly pops in from time to time but it’s not the mandate of the show. I thought it was a funny line and it establishes the prominence and the stardom of the Lyon family. All the Obama references in Season 1 were just to show how famous Lucious was.
Is the fallout from the failed hostile takeover is going to play a major part of Season 2? In episode two, Cookie and her sons start their own record label (SPOILER ALERT!!!) to compete with Empire named Lyon Dynasty. The family dynamics are so intertwined with the business interests. How will this play out as a greater arc for the season?
It’s going to be a season-long arc, this Dynasty versus Empire. It’s a reversal of last season, right? The alliances have shifted. Cookie and Hakeem now are the scrappy underdogs, versus Lucious and Jamal, who are the Empire. Whereas last season it was Hakeem and Lucious, and Cookie and Jamal were the underdogs. So the relationships have shifted and now we’re going to have to see them come together and create this new company.
I do like seeing the Cookie-Hakeem dynamic.
Isn’t it neat? Hakeem has a great arc this season. I love watching them work together because it was such a fraught relationship last season. I thought it would be quite touching to see them come together.
Lastly…is the name Dynasty a nod to the conversation about Dynasty the TV show’s influence on Empire?
Perhaps. (Laughs.) I will say that before the season started me and Ilene Chaiken went away to Ojai to break the season and start the process. And we came up the idea that Cookie and Hakeem would start this company. We were coming up with names, and I wanted the name to be in the world of Empire: an epic, classical, Shakespearean-type name. When we came up with Dynasty we loved it because it was that. It has a very classical Shakespearean, mythological feel to it but it’s also a wonderful nod to our show’s genre. I think the Lyon Dynasty is a great name.
