.leedanielsent on the afterlife of Empire, the limits of woke culture, and why Precious was really a comedy. A conversation with andrewrgoldman
Photo: Ryan Pfluger One afternoon in May, inside his modern Beverly Hills home, Lee Daniels digs his toes into a sitting room’s biscuit-colored flokati, visibly restless as he toggles between two iPhones while waiting for Fox to announce the fate of Star, his Empire spinoff. He’s in jeans and a black hoodie embossed with the word blackman in black letters. “ ‘Nothing so far,’ ” Daniels says, reading from his phone. “ ‘No love yet for Star.’ ” By day’s end, Star would be canceled.
It’s interesting because one of the things you notice immediately in Empire is you don’t hear the N-word, at least in the first seasons. Why not? Daniels, far right, at Radnor High School in 1976. Photo: COURTESY OF LEE DANIEL So at that moment, did you feel like you had actually inherited some of that homophobia you had been a victim of as a kid?
The reporting that’s emerged about the Jussie Smollett case suggests that he faked a racist, homophobic mugging in order to get paid more money on Empire. You initially publicly supported his story. Are you embarrassed? You are a showman and a provocateur. A friend of mine remarked that she’d never heard of Smollett and all of a sudden he was the most famous guy in America.
Making Terrence Howard a lead in a network show seems like a risky call. He’s somebody who has been described for 20 years as difficult.He’s quite eccentric. He developed his own mathematics in which he believes one times one equals two. It was a little surprising to learn that Fox was ending Empire. Do you think the Jussie situation played a part in that decision?
The most devastating thing on Empire might have been the scene in the pilot when Lucious, in flashback, discovers his very young son wearing his mother’s heels and takes him outside and throws him in the garbage can. Did something like that actually happen to you? I read an early profile of you when you were directing your first film, Shadowboxer. You were at a party in Bryn Mawr, at the mansion of one of the film’s financiers, and the writer noted that you were the only person of color and the only gay person in the whole crowd. Did you spend a lot of time in situations like that?It was great. You know, God really blessed me when I went to that all-white school. I never experienced racism. I didn’t experience racism until way into my adulthood.
Paula Kelly. She was our Meryl Streep. But there were not opportunities for her. There were several black Meryl Streeps around.Oh my God. Phyllis Yvonne Stickney, Pearl Bailey. The real ka-banger was Dorothy Dandridge, who just didn’t get the opportunity. I got tired of telling people that there weren’t any jobs for them except pimps and drug dealers.
Fosse famously had a drug problem. And he had great success but was forever miserable and unsatisfied, just as you’ve often said you are. He dropped dead at 60. You’re 59. Does it give you any perspective? What is so shocking about two people, white or black, in such pain that the only way you can ease that pain is through sex?I can only talk about me, you know, me as a man, where I’ve been in my life. And how troubled I have been and how deeply I’ve compartmentalized some of this pain and trauma through drugs or sex. I don’t understand why you don’t understand that.
I’m really good friends with Angela, so I’m going to call her and find out because I never read that. I’m best friends with her, so I gotta ask her the hell was that about. You tell them, “This is what I’m doing. This is what you’re going to get back. Do you believe in me? Here’s the script. Here are the actors. Please give me the money.” It’s pretty simple. I mean, you’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince.
In an interview, you said that, under “white law,” he’d signed all the papers and the movie lost money and you didn’t owe him anything, but that, under “black law,” you had to pay your debt. You followed it with Precious. I gather it was received differently by audiences at Sundance than by those at Magic Johnson in Harlem, where it was screen-tested.
The Weinstein Company released The Butler. Did you ever see anything that seemed inappropriate with Harvey? I’m not driven to be the first black person to win that Oscar. Was I disappointed? Yeah. Was I surprised? No. Oprah and Forest [Whitaker] got nods at the SAG Awards, and it was good enough for me. Then that whole he-should-have-been-nominated thing started. Everybody kept saying black people deserve it. I don’t think I deserve anything. My path has opened the door for this whole renaissance that is happening.
We’re very good friends. The way you say that sounds disrespectful. It wasn’t said with the disrespectful tone you just said to me.I begged her to! I was adamant. I’m sure I was one of many people doing it. And then she stopped texting me. Then I left her alone.The Hollywood Reporter ran a story that said this was evidence that movies about black subjects are difficult to finance. Is that true?
Guess what? Build a bridge. Get the fuck over it. It’s a movie. We ain’t killing motherfuckers. I think they were making too much of it. I swear to God, that was not an attack. I wasn’t there to start a fight. I was just actually curious. Are you kidding me? I’m not that smart. I don’t know how to take on the white man.
I think maybe the third episode in the first season. I’d directed the pilot and the first episode, and then I handed it off to [Chaiken], who’s really a great director. But it wasn’t my look. There were things with Cookie’s hair, with lines that didn’t feel right. And I just said, “Oh my God, what the fuck is this?” Because I’m so fanatical about what I want you to see onscreen.
She did. She loves Tyler Perry. I really did The Butler for her. It took everything I had to restrain myself to do that PG-13 film. It felt like I was handcuffed. I did The Butler to shut my mother up and to show people that I can play buttoned-up if I have to. I can keep the camera still. It’s fucking like watching molasses dry, but I can.
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