The Empire Taraji P. Henson Built
By Niki McGloster | Photographed by Gomillion & Leupold/Getty Images
“This is the happiest I’ve ever been in my career,” Taraji P. Henson says from her temporary residence in Chicago — the city where Hollywood mogul Lee Daniels tapes Fox Network’s new record-breaking series, Empire, which he created and brought to Henson. “The cast is family. Bryshere [Gray] is always over here rattling through my pots and Jussie [Smollett] came over here the other day and spilled red wine all over my area rug,” she laughs. “I wake up the next morning, come out here and Gabby had told him to put salt on it. Salt is everywhere!”
She’s captivating within the first few minutes of our conversation, with her distinct Washington, D.C. native accent permeating our connection. Her charisma is wide-awake even during breakfast hours, when most folks are comfortably settled into their nine-to-fives or watching the second hour of Today. Shaking off the sandman with ease, she immediately weighs in on Cookie Lyon, her starring role as a sassy matriarch who, sprung from a 17-year bid, hopes to rebuild the connection with her three sons and reclaim her piece of her successful music family’s pie. “I played a lot of characters that could’ve been borderline stereotypical women, but my job as an actress is to make the audience understand and empathize with the people. Cookie is a lot,” she says. “She wears me out but I know this woman. I’ve done my research inside and out. I took Cookie from Lee and made her my own.”
Though it may seem as if this powerhouse force leapt out of the blue, Henson has put in almost two decades of work. For starters, in 2001, audiences received a taste of Taraji as Yvette, the loud-talking, unforgettable lead in John Singleton’s urban classic, Baby Boy, her first film. Since, she’s ping-ponged between runaway success on the silver screen with romantic comedy hits like Think Like A Man and Think Like A Man Too, an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and lukewarm reception to her TV roles, such as CBS’s Person of Interest. But even in the highest, most transitional tiers of her career to date, like today, where she’s accumulating the attention of not just African-American viewers but also about 4.2 million non-black homes nationwide (the show averaged a whopping overall 10.8 million viewers in its third week) Henson digests the talk of TV numbers (and award chatter) but zeroes in only on her craft. “Right now, the hype is great. I hope that now, because of my name, people are starting to connect the dots. But for me, it’s not about awards because that’s so political, so finicky. Yes, having that beautiful trophy is a great accomplishment, but that doesn’t alter how I’m gonna move in this industry. I just put my knuckles to the wall and I work.”
Her humility is a refreshing nod to her roots. A kid from blue collar lineage — her maternal grandfather was a sharecropper who raised eight children on a plantation then would later migrate to D.C. — the actress, now 44, learned early on how to hustle. “I was tryna babysit at 8,” she laughs. “I would say, ‘You go to the store, I’ll watch the baby. Gimme $5!’” However, it’s her mother’s account of a young Taraji’s clairvoyant words that adhere to the star. “My mother said she would be at the dinner table, you know, emotional over bills and stuff, and even as a young girl, I would come over to her and say, ‘Mommy, don’t cry. I’ma be really rich one day and be famous and take care of us.’ I just knew.”
Years after Henson’s promise, Cookie has become a fixture in some living rooms, joining the top tier social media ranks of another smallscreen African-American heroine by the name of Olivia Pope, albeit characters like How To Get Away With Murder’s Annalise Keating (Viola Davis) and black-ish’s Rainbow Johnson (Tracee Ellis Ross) have carved out a place for themselves with their top-rated primetime programs as well. Henson explains that there is room enough for everybody. No need to take turns. “It feels good that there’s not just one black person. I don’t like that we get fixated on one or two at a time, or three at a time. If you look at Caucasian Hollywood, every year there’s a handful of new faces you’ve never seen before, then after that, they got five movies coming out and they’re introducing you to more talent. So I’m just so happy to see what’s happening on television right now. We have options and that’s how it should be.”
While celebrating the variety of black talent currently on-screen, becoming distracted by her peers’ success, however, is not on Henson’s to-do list. With a tightknit, mega-watt circle that includes Gabrielle Union, Regina Hall and Sanaa Lathan, tunnel vision is imperative. “If you don’t stay in your lane and you start looking around, you’ll go crazy,” she says. “I use to have this crazy thing with Amy Adams, and I love Amy Adams. You see her [consistently] getting nominated, as she should, because Amy does good work. But, it’s like, ‘Well, I did good work too.’ But if you choose to stay in that place then you become miserable. It’s a pity party and nobody cares. I’m human, so I’ve done it. But I check that because it’s ego and it’s the devil.”
By the time you read this, there will have been enough stereotype-laden episodes aired on Empire to keep your tongues wagging and your Twitter soapbox on fleek. Since the pilot, backlash about homosexual and black stereotypes has kicked up — some creating harsh social media sparring, some sprinkled nonchalantly over the dinner table. Either way, talk is good, according to the show’s leading lady. “I’m just proud that people are talking. Everybody don’t like Barack Obama,” she says, referencing the second episode of the season where her on-screen son, Hakeem (Gray) slams the POTUS, calling him a sellout. “People are out there saying that. That’s what art is supposed to do: expose this shit. You know, we’re dealing with subject matter that’s not really dealt with. Art is supposed to challenge, start a conversation, so let’s lift the carpet up and deal with this dirt. It’s not like we bashed Barack Obama and the show went off. No, Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard) jumped in his [son’s] ass. That’s real life stuff. So I’m glad you’re mad. Do something about it. Go in the hood and talk to the kids so they don’t do dumb stuff like that.”
Henson exhibits the same intensity when talking about her real-life 20-year-old son’s unnecessary run-ins with cops. “My child has been racially profiled. He was in Glendale, California and did exactly everything the cops told him to do, including letting them illegally search his car. It was bogus because they didn’t give him the ticket for what he was pulled over for. Then he’s at University of Southern California, the school that I was going to transfer him to, when police stopped him for having his hands in his pockets. So guess where he’s going? Howard University. I’m not paying $50K so I can’t sleep at night wondering is this the night my son is getting racially profiled on campus.” Though sleep doesn’t always come easy when it pertains to her son, other parts of Taraji’s wheelhouse are pretty clear of disturbances to her energy. Her off days are spent in her Los Angeles abode letting her hair down and nurturing her passion projects, including a Civil Rights movement film. “We just sent the script to George Clooney. He’s looking for more endearing, emotionally moving projects to direct so we sent it to him. That’s what I’m really focusing on right now on my off time.”
“This journey is not over,” she says with a bit of defiance in her voice. Empire was officially picked up for a second season and the future is sparkling bright for the rising star. “I’ve come a long way from ‘Aye, that’s that girl from Baby Boy’ to now people know how to pronounce my name. But I’m just scratching the surface. For whatever reason, God gave me this life, and I’m not gon’ fuck it up.”
Originally published at uptownmagazine.com on February 11, 2015.
