'Empire' Showrunner Ilene Chaiken on Cookie, Guest Stars, and Season 2

If common wisdom about television were ever a thing, almost all of it jumped directly out the window after the arrival of Empire. A Dynasty-inspired drama set in the hip-hop world? Co-created by Precious’s Lee Daniels? Overseen by The L Word’s Ilene Chaiken? On Fox? On paper, none of this made sense, or at least it didn’t if you were going by common wisdom. But again, that view is currently in pieces on the sidewalk because it turns out Empire is thrilling, hilarious, and infused with a sort of subtle intelligence to flatter any viewer. All 15 million of them. Believe it: Network TV’s most audacious show is also its biggest hit.

Empire’s such a phenomenon that we’re already fretting about just how long it’ll stay that way. Sure, Season 1 continues to break ratings records, but it’ll be a short one overall (only 12 episodes). Will Empire’s creative streak endure through its inevitably way-longer Season 2? And will, in an echo of what happened with Nashville, its genius musical director Timbaland leave the show as T Bone Burnett eventually did with the ABC country music drama? But who cares about those kinds of future concerns when we can be talking about Cookie right now? Empire’s executive producer and showrunner Ilene Chaiken chatted with us by phone about these concerns and more.

Cookie is probably the best character on television right now. I realize that is not a question, but it’s how all my conversations start lately. Were you prepared for her to be such a scene-stealer?
We knew she was fabulous from the moment we saw the pilot. I didn’t work on the pilot, but it was seeing the pilot that made me want to do the show. And my colleagues at the studio and the network were on fire for Cookie. I mean, she is just spectacular from the moment she walks onscreen. But no! Nobody knew, nobody could’ve in our wildest dreams imagined that she would explode in the way she has.

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You’re no stranger to working with strong women and strong female characters…
Both!

But Empire is ultimately an ensemble show. Is it at risk of becoming The Cookie Show?
No, because first of all, the entire cast is really strong. And the stories by their nature accommodate all of their strengths and all of their personas, and intuitively, I think, we know that we don’t need to overdo it. We need to tell an honest story with Cookie — those moments come, they kind of leap out at us — but I don’t think that those Cookie moments that people talk about would be working if Taraji [P. Henson] and the character she portrays weren’t also really real, really accessible, and telling a story that doesn’t only make you gasp, it makes you laugh, it makes you feel things. Taraji makes you feel and relate to so much of what her character goes through.

And, two, all of these other characters working off of her, working with her, make her character what it is. None of it stands alone. The ensemble is very much an ensemble in that way.

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Cookie’s the latest in what’s a tradition when it comes to primetime soaps. You’ve got Dynasty’s Alexis Carrington, Melrose Place’s Amanda, but the difference here is that Cookie is actually heroic. How important is making sure these characters are still sympathetic despite their deeds?
That is the show that Lee Daniels and Danny Strong made. Lee wholeheartedly embraces this Dynasty paradigm. It’s the “black Dynasty,” it’s the “hip-hop Dynasty.” And I love that, I love that he goes for it unabashedly and without shame, but I said to him in the very beginning, and I believe this firmly, Empire is so much more than that. I loved Dynasty, but Dynasty was a confection. Empire has substance. It has authenticity. It deals with things, with real things and important things that those shows didn’t deal with. And also in that we’re telling the story of people whose lives really are this large. We’re not having to reach for these moments. These are characters who exist in the world, and with just a little bit of finesse we’re telling their stories.

Empire can get pretty wild, but it’s still steeped in smaller humanistic touches. Is that always on the page, or do you rely on the actors to bring those nuances?
We try very hard to put it on the page. I’m sure there are times when we don’t quite achieve it and the cast brings their humanity to those moments. But we’re very much aware of it, and it’s our intention to put it on the page. Both of those things that you cited are equally important to me and equally fun to write and create. The humanity and the melodrama. I want both of those things. I want them constantly. I want them in every scene in every episode if possible!

Your amazing roster of guest stars is a huge selling point. Are you writing for these stars or is it more the traditional, ‘We wrote a part, now who should play it?’ type of thing.
It happens every which way. In the first season of a show, when a show hasn’t been on television, it’s harder to get all of your dream guest stars. We had one great advantage in that Lee has all of those relationships. So people who wouldn’t ordinarily be in the first season of a show came to Empire because of their relationships with Lee. In some cases they were presented to us. And in some cases we wrote a role and then wildly spun a wish list, “Who would play this?” and then along comes Courtney Love, who has wanted to work with Lee and is really excited about being on Empire.

So it happens in both ways, and we also kind of mix it up in the way that we treat those appearances. In some cases we have quite famous people come, and they play characters. Sometimes they play characters like themselves, sometimes characters who have nothing to do with themselves, sometimes characters who are themselves. And that was a very conscious choice, to make our world more real and that it makes sense in the world of Lucious Lyon.

Do you ever get afraid that by riffing on real-life people you might burn a bridge with a potential future guest star? Like, you know, maybe Frank Ocean might not want to participate in the future?
I hope not. And I imagine there will be some people who won’t want to appear on the show for one reason or another, but I hope that everybody takes what we’re doing with some levity and humor.

Are you getting crazy requests for Season 2 appearances?
In a word: Yes. And it’s way too soon to even respond to anybody, but it’s very gratifying.

Timbaland is a huge asset to the show. Can you assure us that he’ll be sticking around for the long haul, or will he be pulling a T Bone Burnett and passing the torch after a season or two?
No, he will be sticking around. And also he’s assembled an incredible team of writers and producers whom he works with and who worked with him on a lot of his projects who are also working with us on an episode-by-episode basis. So he’s there, he’s very involved, and he also has created a system for us to keep the level of quality as extraordinary as it was in the pilot and throughout the first season.

That’s a relief!
Empire’s music is really important to us, and it’s indistinguishable from the show. In other words, the music on the show is story as much as the writing and the acting. And it’s not something that we have any intention of letting go or letting slide. Our intention is for Season 2 to be better than Season 1, both in terms of story and music. And that’s not to say that I don’t think the music was spectacular this season, I just think that we always have to aim to do better.

Speaking of this theoretical Season 2… Are you nervous that Fox is going to want a 30-episode Season 2? Are you prepared mentally for that kind of challenge?
I think that we’re prepared to do what they and we think is best for the show. We want it to run for a very long time and so do they, and I’m confident — the size of the order hasn’t been determined, it’ll certainly be more episodes than we made in the first season because we were a midseason show. But I’m confident that they’re not going to ask us to do more than we can do well. And if we can do a full season well and if we come up with a plan for how to do it, then we will. And if we do fewer, it’s because we think that’s exactly the right number to keep making Empire great.

Empire has themes and storylines that are pretty transgressive for a network show, but clearly the ratings are huge. Does that give you a sort of creative mandate to get as edgy as you want?
You can’t ignore the ratings. I’d be lying to you if I said we were ignoring the ratings, but it’s not changing what we do. We’re trying to do the show that Empire is from the pilot onward. The show that it clearly wants to be, needs to be. And it takes on themes and presents characters and stories and a world of experience that we haven’t seen on network television before. And so many of us have been ranting for years about, “This is where broadcast television needs to go, should go,” and it’s just exciting to see that we’re going there, we’re getting the support to go there, and it’s proving to be true. That making television about the world as we all experience it and going to those places that aren’t regressive, that can be transgressive but they’re not regressive, is really what had to happen.

The L Word was about a community of people rarely seen on television before, and Empire reflects a demographic distressingly underrepresented even in 2015. Would you say that’s your primary interest, telling universal stories through the prism of underrepresented communities?
You exactly perfectly articulated my message as a television-maker. I love most doing just that. Making television that draws in a lot of people, a large audience, with stories that are inherently human and relatable and universal but at the same time takes people into a world of people that they wouldn’t otherwise know. I think that’s what works really well in television. If you can get those two things somehow colliding in the same story, then I think you’re really doing something.

The finale is coming up, and this is the time when you can prove that you can stick a landing…
We’re very excited about what’s happening in the finale. We’re airing two episodes back to back, two episodes that I’m really excited about, and I think we landed our finale! [Laughs.] It’s shocking and breathtaking in all the right ways. And the most telling thing for me is we’re really excited to write Season 2 because we’ll have opened up a whole new world of possibilities, which is what you want to do at the end of every season of television.

And I’m guessing there will be no surprise cameos by Mo’Nique?
[Laughs.] I’m going to duck that question.

Watch a sneak peek from the next episode of Empire:

Empire airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on Fox.