Lee Daniels started off his career in entertainment producing and directing prolific films that helped the American director make a name for himself. Then in 2015, Daniels decided to give television a whirl when his new hip-hop drama series Empire got a series order at Fox. Four years later after its final season, the Academy Award nominee gets real that his time working on the series was “horrible.”
The movies that made Lee Daniels a household name like Monster’s Ball and Precious were independent movies that gave him creative control. But as he said in his interview with The Film Stage, the filmmaker’s television start with Empire was a little experiment to see what it would be like to have to answer to studio heads. Reflecting back on that experience, Daniels admitted he found his time working on the Fox series not to be a pleasant one, and here’s why:
Horrible. Absolutely the worst experience. Horrible! But guess what? Fucking that money, money, money! I was able to put my kids through college and shit. So that in itself was worth it. But getting back to [The Deliverance], I have final cut at Netflix because otherwise I wasn’t interested in doing the film. But they wanted––’they’ meaning Netflix––wanted jump scares every second. And I did not know how to do that. And I said, ‘Listen, man, I can’t do this. I don’t know how… it does not compute.’ My favorite movies were The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby and The Omen.
While Empire may not have been the best experience for Lee Daniels, I can understand him being a part of it for its six-season run as it helped cover his kids’ college education. After all, Empire truly did become a successful series. After audiences saw the chemistry between Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson in the drama film Hustle & Flow, it was bound to happen that fans would want to see that same magic again for the Fox series. At the time Empire was on air, it became one of the most-watched TV shows on Fox with rave reviews as well as award nominations and wins.
The Shadowboxer director continued to say that he had no idea that Empire would have the cultural impact that it has today. Lee Daniels put a lot of focus into developing Cookie’s character and the memorable music of the series without realizing how influential the Black drama series became. Even though the American director’s series did belong to Fox, Daniels still dared to put heartbreaking moments from his own life into the show and push the envelope to introduce complex characters and bring representation for the Black LGBTQ+ community. He admitted without Empire, there may not have been successful projects like Black Panther, Insecure, and Black-Ish.
As Lee Daniels previously mentioned, his Netflix exorcism movie The Deliverance did have the Star creator working under studio heads again. However, Daniels was faced with the challenge of adding input when working on the project. He told The Film Stage about Netflix pressuring him to build up the tension which conflicted with his own focuses. But, the Best Director nominee knew that while Deliverance was a Lee Daniels movie, it was also a Netflix movie which meant compromising. It proves the real difference between independently made projects and studio ones.
The “horrible” experience Lee Daniels had on Empire may have had to do with answering to studio heads. But, at least the accomplishments his show created had helped put his kids through college and influence other movies and TV creators going forward. If you’d like to revisit Daniels’ popular hip-hop drama series, all episodes of Empire are available on your Hulu subscription.