Queen of the Empire

If someone told me 10 years ago that I'd be watching a series classified as DLSV (suggestive dialogue, coarse language, sexual situations & violence) with a heavy serving of hip-hop (my least fave genre), I'd have said "no way".

Then I saw Cookie Lyon strut out of prison to get her piece of the #empire and I kept tuning in.

Taraji P. Henson as Cookie Lyon leaves prison after 17 years.

While I like "Jamal's" pop sound, it's not the music that makes me a fan. It's actually the story-line. The story of a a hip-hop music mogul who strives to stay on top in the music business - having created an "empire" from mostly foul gain and on the sacrifice of a wife who lovingly and trustingly did some of his "dirty work" for him, gets caught and does 17 years of time, only getting out when she rats on what she knows of the underworld. Now Cookie's back to take what she's owed!

She proves to be a mother who loves her sons dearly and falls back in love with the still bad boy Lucious, now dapperly turned out in expensive suits, living in lavish splendour and dating a sassy debutante nearly half his age. 

The Lyon Family
 

That was season 1. Over the remaining seasons Cookie, known for her loud mouth,

 

Cookie Lyon's fashion style is bold and colourful!

bold fashion choices but excellent ear for sound, soon proves her worth in the music industry eventually clawing her way back onto the executive of Empire.

Cookie gets her seat on the board of executives

 But the real draw for me was Taraji P. Henson herself. I'd seen her work in a couple of Tyler Perry's dramas - The Family That Preys, I Can Do Bad All By Myself for example - and Think Like A Man. So I watched Empire out of curiosity and kept tuning in like millions of fans everywhere to see what new trouble Cookie was causing - and she caused lots. None more so than for a young man to lose his chance in politics, thus earning the eternal ire of his conniving bourgeois mama, played by another female powerhouse of an actress, Phylicia Rashad.

The Grand-dame of the '80s sitcom, Phylicia Rashad, plays the arch enemy of the Queen of the Empire, played by Taraji P. Henson

What really interests me though is Taraji's story of making it against the odds - graduating college as a young, single mother, packing up to go to the other side of the USA to be an actress with that child in tow and well into her 20s.

  Taraji tells her against the odds story

 

Her rise to success was anything but overnight and now as a middle-aged Mom, her career is rising with the Cookie Lyon role and the portrayal in the highly-acclaimed film, Hidden Figures for which she and the entire ensemble received a Screen Actors Guild Award earlier this year.

Receiving the SAG Cast Award for the film "Hidden Figures"

Here's to Taraji P. Henson - a true winner against the odds.