‘Empire’ boss on shocking explosion aftermath and ‘dire consequences’ ahead
Fox’s Empire returned Wednesday with a physically and mentally changed Lucious (Terrence Howard) at the center of the drama. Showrunner Ilene Chaiken discusses reinventing Lucious, the ‘dire consequences’ ahead for Andre (Trai Byers) after his failed attempt to kill his father and the thinking behind Lucious’ severe leg injury: “We wanted to give Lucious something to live with for the rest of his life, or to live without.” Excerpts:
The season premiere opens in an unusual way, with Cookie and the other members of the Lyon family talking directly to the camera. What was the thinking behind that opening? We always knew that we wanted to open this episode with that performance, which is the celebration of the 20-year anniversary and Lucious coming and appearing onstage for the first time. And then, flashback to the day before. We always knew that that was the framework of the episode and that day before, in which Lucious loses his nerve and tries to back out and we reveal everything that there is to reveal about where Lucious is in his recovery. That that was going to be the emotional core of the episode. And then in the course of that, that opening in which we jump around in time and all the other Lyons are talking to camera, we just wanted to get into how emotional the family was feeling in the wake of what’s happened to Lucious, their leader, their founder. It just seemed like a really great way to make an homage.
Lucious has changed so much from when we saw him before the accident. How much did that impact you and the writers after writing for the character for three seasons? How did it feel different in the room this season?
It was really exciting for us as writers and I think for Terrence as an actor and also for the other actors working with him. It’s what we looked to do and what challenges us as filmmakers, as television-makers - how to continue to tell these stories and yet find something new for each of our characters and for the show in each season. This is as new as you get, to have a legitimate reason to re-create Lucious, to create a whole new Lucious, For him to really have a dramatic journey to go through to basically get back to his old self, to rediscover himself.
How did you settle on what this new version of Lucious would act and sound like?
We talked about it amongst ourselves and talked about how we wanted this new version to have a kind of innocence, to take Lucious to a time back before he became that hard and violent and scheming man that we’ve come to know, and to really tell a story of his reckoning with who he became. In terms of how that was realized, that was a lot up to Terrence. That was a lot of the actor finding that character. We had our literary and cinematic references, but none of them really means anything once it gets in the hands of an actor.
One of the biggest reveals of the premiere was the extent of Lucious’ injuries, particularly his amputated leg. Why did you write in an injury of this magnitude? What was the creative thinking behind that?
The thinking behind that, apart from the fact that it’s just great drama and story, was we want to tell stories with consequences. Back in the day, you could shoot someone on television and the next day they would just be back to normal. We saw huge events at the end of last season with that explosion, and people don’t go through things like that without being profoundly altered and usually without losing not just pieces of their psyche but parts of their body. That’s what happens to people in wars. What happens to Lucious is comparable to what happens to someone who’s blown up in a war. We really talked about it a lot in the writers room and said, “Let’s just not be lame about this. Let’s not pretend that it didn’t happen.” It had consequences, and that’s a thematic consequence. We wanted to give Lucious something to live with for the rest of his life, or to live without.