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Power Issue: Empire Soars to the Top of the TV Charts

There’s epic. Then there’s Empire epic. Taraji P. Henson, Terrence Howard and Jussie Smollett—the three megawatt stars of the blockbuster Fox series—enter the show’s bustling soundstage in Chicago and are soon surrounded by over 200 extras, each dressed to the tens, for a blowout concert that will air during the December 2 midseason finale. Executive producer Sanaa Hamri, directing this three-ring-circus of an episode, calls for action, and suddenly Serayah McNeill, who plays Rihanna-esque hip-hop star Tiana, is blazing through the crowd. She is accompanied by a bevy of bubble-butted boys on hoverboards as she performs a raucous, sex-charged number called “Do Somethin’ Wit It.” But this is just the evening’s appetizer. Moments later, the waters part and in comes Alicia Keys.

What’s at stake here? Everything. After all, it’s Empire! This glittery affair, which has drawn the power people of the music industry, is being live-streamed to promote the American Sound Awards—the show’s fictional mash-up of the Grammys and American Music Awards—that has both factions of the Lyon clan desperate for nominations.

“Just like with any of their family gatherings—whether it’s a dinner, a party or a performance—the Lyons are going to find a way to take something really beautiful and f— it up,” says Smollett, who plays middle son Jamal. “It’s what they do best.”

Howard’s character, Lucious Lyon, the megalomaniacal overlord of Empire Entertainment, is obsessed with winning the ASA for Song of the Year. “It has taken on an outsize importance for him,” says executive producer Ilene Chaiken. “It’s about much more than record sales and the devotion of millions. It’s a symbol of greatness for a man who is wont to say things like, ‘I am more powerful than God.’ Lucious wants that award more than life itself.” Mostly because he’s never been nominated for it.

“Lucious has won everything in life but that top prize, and that’s a real sore point with him,” Howard says. “He’s not interested in Best R&B Song. That category, he says, ‘was invented to placate black people.’ He thinks Song of the Year is the only ASA with real prestige.” And woe to anyone who gets in his way this year, including Jamal, who is also a likely contender in the category.

“This is the cutthroat truth about the music industry,” says Hamri, who has directed widely acclaimed videos for Prince, Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj. “Lucious, like a lot of people in the record business, is all about trumping everyone else. He’s not looking at the bigger picture—what’s best for Jamal, for his family, for Empire Entertainment. It’s all about him. And it will get crazy.”

Meanwhile, Lucious’s ex-wife, Cookie, played by Henson, needs some ASA love to help put her rival startup company, Lyon Dynasty, on the map, and she’s praying that her son Hakeem (Bryshere Gray) gets a nod as Rapper of the Year. “It would mean so much to Cookie’s label,” Henson says. “But Lucious is such a bully. He’ll probably find a way to fix the voting.” (For more on the Cookie-Lucious rivalry, see page 24.)

The situation has been hell on Hakeem. “Not only is it him and Cookie versus Lucious and Jamal—with Andre [the eldest Lyon son, played by Trai Byers] working both sides—but Hakeem is starting to realize he has mental problems,” Gray says. “He’s depressed. He sees that having a company is not what it’s cooked up to be, and it’s really messing with him. A while ago he was kidnapped. Now he’s feeling emotionally kidnapped.”

But let’s get back to Alicia Keys. The Grammy-winning superstar is playing four-time ASA winner Skye Summers, who hits the stage with Jamal to knock out “Powerful,” a Black Lives Matter über-ballad (cowritten by Smollett) with lyrics ripped from the headlines. It is gloriously performed, and the audience is ecstatic.

Then things go south. The host of the concert, radio personality Charlamagne Tha God, walks out, momentarily fawns over the duo and then rips into the biracial Skye, accusing her of playing up her blackness when it’s professionally convenient. Skye is stunned, confused and devastated by the public humiliation. Clearly, this is going to be a nightmare on Black Twitter.

“This is an issue I’ve been desperate to explore,” says Empire cocreator Lee Daniels. “I don’t want to drop names, but I will. I have a lot of biracial friends—Mariah Carey, Lenny Kravitz and Halle Berry among them—who feel [as if they’re] in a race of their own. For them, it’s always a question of ‘How do I identify? As black? As white?’ And a lot of black people have a big problem with that. But who are we to judge how a person of mixed race should identify?” That message, Daniels adds, “is what Empire is all about. It doesn’t f—ing matter what color you identify with or what sex you’re sleeping with. We’re here to break down barriers.”

Smollett is doing just that during a break in filming, as he greets several African-American state legislators who have come to the set with their very excited families. The actor, who came out as gay in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres last March, later relays how he was blown away by the visitors. “One person told me, ‘My son is 14 and gay, and he came out to me because of you,’” says Smollett. “Another said, ‘My daughter just came out yesterday. She told me it was because of you.’ And a third said, ‘My brother came out to me while we were watching Empire.’”

Such encounters are common these days for the 32-year-old star. “This show is so much bigger than the ratings or the music or the fun factor,” Smollett says. “We hold a mirror up to each viewer and say, ‘Look at yourself. Which character are you most like?’ And,” he adds with a laugh, “if you’re most like Lucious, you should probably check yourself, boo. You might wanna do some work.”

Hey, let’s not pass over those Nielsens so easily! Season 1 of Empire broke TV records we didn’t know existed, debuting last January as the highest-rated freshman series in 10 years and boasting an episode average of 17.3 million viewers. Among broadcast series, it’s No. 1 with adults 18–49 and No. 1 in all of television with African-American adults 18–49. Cooler still, it is the only series since the advent of the current ratings system to grow its viewership every single week in its first season. Based on tweets per episode, Empire is also the largest social-media draw among all series—broadcast and cable. Though ratings have leveled off in Season 2, the show is still a colossus, one with a profound effect on how pilots are now being cast.

“Everyone is looking for diversity thanks to us,” says Henson, “but I hope they don’t miss what’s really going on here. The work on Empire is incredible. Being black is not the trick! My hope is that Hollywood can get deeper in its thinking and not just throw a bunch of black people on TV because they know it’ll make money.”

Her boss seconds that emotion. “The danger now is that a lot of shows will become cookie-cutter—pardon the pun—versions of Empire,” says Daniels. “As a man of color, nothing makes me happier than to help change the way TV is made. But this isn’t a ‘black show.’ It’s a show about extremely relatable human beings. Many people in this business still don’t get that.”

Empire airs Wednesdays, 9/8c, Fox

Heroes Reborn: The Saga Continues

They never had a chance to say goodbye. The 13-episode supersaga Heroes Reborn, premiering September 24 on NBC, will begin five years after the conclusion of Heroes, the fantastical “Save the cheerleader, save the world!” series that started off as a critically adored phenomenon only to fizzle and end abruptly in its fourth season. For the show’s diehard fans, the cancellation and the lack of closure was maddening because, in a way, the story was only getting started: When Heroes left the air on February 8, 2010, young Claire Bennet (Hayden Panettiere) had jumped from the top of a 60-foot Ferris wheel in New York’s Central Park and revealed her amazing regenerative powers to the media. Suddenly, the entire world knew of the existence of people with superhuman abilities.

Now that world is striking back. In Heroes Reborn, starring Zachary Levi and several vets of the original series, those with special powers are known as Evolved Humans (aka EVOs), and their vast numbers are growing across the planet. They are also being stalked, captured and sometimes slaughtered by an increasingly fearful public. Panic over these supreme beings hit critical mass in 2014, when an international summit at the Primatech company in Odessa, Texas, brought thousands of humans and EVOs together in an effort to foster peace. Instead, the event ended in death and destruction on the scale of 9/11. Claire Bennet was among the casualties. Taking credit for this unfathomable act was none other than Dr. Mohinder Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy), the kindly, Peter Parker–esque wall walker from the original series.

“Heroes took place in a world that was dangerous and complicated, but it carried a message of hope and world consciousness,” creator and executive producer Tim Kring notes. “Heroes Reborn is something else altogether. Our heroes have been forced into hiding just when they are needed most. There is an end-of-the-world event coming. We’re talking total extinction.” While Heroes spun on “mystical discovery,” Kring says the new series “plays more like those great Watergate-era paranoid thrillers like Three Days of the Condor and The Parallax View—with a little Quentin Tarantino shock and violence thrown in.”

Scary times to be sure, but Masi Oka is happy to revel in them. The Heroes fan favorite, now a regular on Hawaii Five-0, will bring his time-bending character, Hiro Nakamura, to Reborn for a handful of episodes. Truth be told, he’s showing up for the cast reunion as much as the acting opportunity.

“When Heroes died, there was never a chance for us to grieve as a group,” Oka says. “Tim Kring assured the actors we didn’t have anything to worry about, so we wrapped Season 4 not realizing we’d never be together again with our crew, the producers, the writers, the directors, everyone who made Heroes such an amazing show. We never got to say goodbye to the fans, and that hurt a lot. It was over in a heartbeat.”

Greg Grunberg, who returns in the rebirth as telepath Matt Parkman, won’t forget that fateful day. “I was at a charity breakfast when we were supposed to get word of our pickup from NBC, and I was so excited when Tim called to say we’d do another season,” Grunberg recalls. “Ten minutes later, he called again and said, ‘Nope, it’s only 13 episodes.’ And he kept calling, and each time the deal got shorter and shorter. Then, one of my geek friends called and said, ‘Dude, so sorry you got canceled.’ He’d read about it on a fan blog. That’s how I found out!”

Yes, showbiz is brutal, but it also packs the most insane surprises. One night, out of nowhere, NBC ran a 15-second promo for Heroes Reborn during the 2014 Winter Olympics. “The cast just went nuts texting each other because this was the first any of us had heard about it,” Grunberg says. “To have this second chance is incredible…well, except for the fact I’ve put on 25 pounds since the original and I’m on the treadmill every day trying to look like the old Matt!”

But the old Matt no longer exists. When we last saw the guy, he was an LAPD detective and the show’s moral compass. Now that EVOs are endangered, he’s a hired gun taking any gig that will keep his family safe—even if that means working for the EVO haters. “Matt is a man with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other—and the devil has been winning for the last few years,” Grunberg says. “Some of his choices will shock you.”

Other Heroes stars coming to the revival are Jack Coleman (Noah “HRG” Bennet), Jimmy Jean-Louis (René, aka the Haitian), Cristine Rose (Angela Petrelli) and an all-grown-up Noah Gray-Cabey (Micah). Ramamurthy, who will once again be the show’s hypnotic narrator, was stunned to find out his character is now Public Enemy No. 1.

“This was not the wrap-up for Suresh I was hoping for,” Ramamurthy says with a laugh. “At first, I was like, ‘Wait. Whoa. Whaaat? Suresh is a terrorist?’ But now that I know his entire story arc, what’s happened to him makes sense and I think it’s pretty cool.” Ramamurthy notes that “unless you’re playing an Avenger, a Star Trek character or one of the X-Men, it’s really rare for an actor to revisit a role. We’re all so grateful for this. But let’s face it: Heroes Reborn is not about us old guys. It’s about the new ones.”

And they are one wild bunch. Among the incoming EVOs are Afghanistan war vet Carlos Guttierez (Ryan Guzman), who fights crime in a Mexican wrestler costume under the name “El Vengador,” and Miko Otomo (Kiki Sukezane), a young Tokyo woman whose sword-swinging alter ego “will take us into a surprising and visually stunning world that’ll have the audience buzzing,” Kring says. There’s also a big teen contingent, headed by on-the-run high schooler Tommy Clark (Robbie Kay), who can make people disappear, and Malina (Danika Yarosh), a haunting beauty directly connected to the end of days.

It’ll be up to Noah Bennet, the former Primatech bagger and tagger, to tie all these characters together, just as he did on Heroes. But first he has to come out of hiding. Now known as Ted Barnes, “Noah has gone off the grid since the Odessa incident and is selling cars and living a life of domestic tranquility,” Coleman says. “He wanted out of the EVO game, but, like Michael Corleone in The Godfather, they keep pulling him back in.” After learning that his memory of the Odessa tragedy has been mysteriously altered, Noah finds himself in a battle spanning time and space with new über-villainess Erica Kravid (Rya Kihlstedt), and he will seek help from Hiro.

“These five years have really changed Hiro,” Oka says. “He’s now running his father’s company [Yamagato Industries] in Japan and keeping his powers under wraps. He’s no longer the innocent. He’s done going back in time to fix things. But he can’t say no to HRG.” Before long, Hiro is in “the most startling sword fight of his life, with not one but two katana swords—Darth Maul–style,” Oka says. “If we go another season, you may see him with three.”

But if Heroes Reborn does end up returning for another round, will Levi make the cut? It’s hard to imagine that happening. In a darkly disturbing career turn, Levi—best known as the adorably dorky secret agent in Chuck—will take on the role of Luke Collins, whose EVO son was killed in Odessa. Luke and his wife, Joanne [Judi Shekoni], are now bent on revenge against all EVOs, and in the first episode, they will infiltrate a church and slay several members of an EVO support group—a scene uncomfortably reminiscent of last June’s mass murder in Charleston, South Carolina. The act seems utterly unforgivable. But is it?

“My hope is to make the audience understand and sympathize with Luke,” Levi says. “If we can somehow find the humanity in someone we consider a monster, and maybe even relate to him, well, that says a lot about us as humans, doesn’t it? Luke is so tortured and hopeless that he believes this world can’t be safe and good as long as there are people with powers in it. He kills not just to honor his son’s memory but to save his marriage and his wife’s sanity.”

Joanne is another story. “Luke is so conflicted [about eliminating EVOs] that it gets to the point where he wants to die,” Levi says. “But all this murder only serves to bolster his wife and to further her bloodlust.” Joanne is in so much pain that “killing becomes her addiction and the only way she can feel better,” adds Shekoni. “She’s actually enjoying this, and it might split them up as a couple. You won’t know from episode to episode if they’re going to make it.”

Especially when a major secret about Luke is revealed. “My character is basically Paul from the Bible, the guy who persecuted Christians and then became one,” Levi says. “Luke will go through a huge identity crisis when he becomes the very thing that he hates.”

The actor knows he may disappoint some of his fanbase, specifically those who prefer him kooky and cuddly. “I’m definitely feeling the fear factor, but you know what? Being Chuck required very little acting on my part,” Levi admits. “This show challenges me. This show makes me believe in myself as an artist. As a longtime Heroes fan, I want to take the viewers—new and old—on a f—ing awesome ride. You can’t please everybody, but that doesn’t mean you don’t try.”

Heroes Reborn premieres Thursday, Sept. 24, 8/7c, NBC.

Ray Donovan Returns: Can the Fixer Be Fixed?

Even when Liev Schreiber isn’t playing the title role in Ray Donovan—a cold, brooding, slay-for-pay Hollywood “fixer”—he looks like he’s about to beat the crap out of you. The man can’t help it. He’s just made that way, with his wide, glowering, don’t-mess-with-me puss and a 6-foot-3 alpha-dog body that seems impenetrable and unstoppable. Right now, on the set of the Showtime series at Sony Studios in Los Angeles, that fearsome Schreiberocity is on full display as the actor hunts for director Dan Attias to discuss a problem with the script. Oh, Schreiber has no gripe with the writing itself; just that there’s too much of it.

The scene giving him agita has Ray returning home to his family, having distanced himself for quite some time from wife Abby (Paula Malcomson) and kids Conor (Devon Bagby) and Bridget (Kerris Dorsey). It’s quickly apparent that Ray hasn’t been missed. In fact, he’s been replaced. His older brother, Terry (Eddie Marsan), has moved in and become surrogate husband and father, and for once, there’s a bit of much-needed bliss in the Donovan household. Schreiber wants Ray to react silently, rather than verbally, to this startling domestic shift, and he asks Attias if he can cut some of his lines. After a few minutes of debate, Attias says he wants the scene played as written. For a moment, Schreiber seems ready to push the issue, but he suddenly retreats from the disagreement with a good-natured shrug, mumbling, “Well, it was worth a shot” to no one in particular. And then he begins to sing…softly, sweetly.

“Don’t cry out loud. Just keep it inside, learn how to hide your feelings.”

Nearby crew members glance at one another and are not quite sure how to react, so they don’t. This clearly is no everyday happening. Schreiber continues his song, with growing poignancy and bravado.

“Fly high and proud! And if you should fall, remember you almost had it aaaalllll!”

He nearly, but not quite, hits the final note and is greeted with more puzzled silence. “What’s that song from?” he asks. No one knows.

“Les Miz?” someone finally offers meekly.

“No, I mean who sang it?” Schreiber asks. “Was it Debby Boone? I’ve had that song playing in my head since Season 1 and can’t make it stop.”

With good reason. “Don’t Cry Out Loud”—which, for the record, was a major hit back in the ’70s for Melissa Manchester—could be Ray’s personal theme song. After all, the emotionally constipated ruffian and chronic philanderer never met a feeling he couldn’t stuff deep down into the darkest recesses of his twisted, Irish Catholic psyche. As a child, Ray was sexually abused—along with his younger brother, Bunchy (Dash Mihok)—by the family priest back home in South Boston, a trauma that still haunts them and has robbed Ray of any ability to feel intimacy. And the hits just keep coming: At the end of last season, Ray’s lover Kate (Vinessa Shaw) was killed by his trusted right-hand man, Avi (Steven Bauer), in a whack job ordered by Ray’s boss and father figure, attorney Ezra Goldman (Elliott Gould). Worse yet, Ray found out Abby was having an affair with a young, handsome LAPD detective. Now there’s hell to pay.

When Season 3 begins, several months have passed. “Ray has cut himself off from his family and the people he works with,” Schreiber says. “He can’t forgive Abby. He can’t forgive Avi and Ezra. And he still can’t forgive his dad, Mickey [Jon Voight], for abandoning the family all those years ago, which opened the door to the pedophile priest. In Ray’s mind, his entire world has transgressed against him and he’s holding everyone accountable.”

Ray once earned top dollar protecting Ezra’s celebrity clients—covering up their scandals and burying their skeletons (sometimes literally)—but he’s now working freelance, picking up scraps whenever he can. “Ray no longer wants to be cleaning up after people who don’t deserve it,” Schreiber says. “He’s done being treated like a second-class citizen, like a thug. He’s looking to legitimize himself and climb the social ladder.”

That opportunity comes when Ray is offered a full-time gig handling crises for the filthy-rich Finney family and their many entertainment holdings. The clan’s oily patriarch, Andrew (Ian McShane), is getting ready to step down as CEO and will appoint as successor either his feckless son, Casey (Guy Burnet), who runs the Finneys’ movie studio, or his ruthless daughter, Paige (Katie Holmes), who heads their sports agency.

“There’s no doubt Paige is more equipped and powerful,” says executive producer and showrunner David Hollander. “But Andrew has an emotional connection to his son that he doesn’t have with his daughter. He’s impressed by Paige but loves Casey.” The elder Finney is also aware that Paige will go to any lengths—however disgusting and illegal—to get what she wants, and he fears she’s a threat to him. This has Ray caught between protecting Andrew’s secrets and helping Paige achieve her lofty, and potentially lucrative, goal of acquiring an NFL team and bringing it to L.A.

“Nothing intimidates Paige,” says Holmes, who drew inspiration for her badass character—a juicy change of pace from her many sweetheart roles—by studying Faye Dunaway’s Oscar-winning turn as a cutthroat TV executive in Network. “Paige is hugely ambitious and can handle herself in any situation, but she does have cracks. Over time, you’ll see why she’s so alone and why she’s so willing to do inappropriate things. Some people are going to think she’s crazy, and,” Holmes adds with a laugh, “I might be one of them.”

This being Ray Donovan, lustful sparks will fly between fixer and fixee, of course. “At first, Paige is resentful and untrusting of Ray,” Holmes says. “He’s a stranger, and the Finneys always have people trying to take advantage of them. But she starts to see how she can use Ray to her advantage and that they are very similar. They are both lost souls. He’s exciting to her.”

Life for the other Donovans is no less wild this season. Shy, sexually dysfunctional Bunchy will get his mojo going when he falls for a wrestler-dominatrix (Alyssa Diaz), and Terry starts out behind bars after being nabbed in a botched robbery. “Terry’s Parkinson’s disease is worsening now that he’s without proper medical care, and he’s angered a bunch of Aryan Nations inmates who want him dead,” Marsan says. “But he’d rather remain in prison than be sprung by Ray and be dependent on him. If Terry survives, he’ll be in a wheelchair within two years. He wants it all to end.”

Mickey, meanwhile, is living off his racetrack winnings in a hooker-infested apartment complex in the San Fernando Valley. He takes a shine to one of the working gals (Fairuza Balk) and often babysits her young daughter (Shree Crooks), a not-so-talented showbiz wannabe up for the role of Shirley Temple in a movie biopic. Before long, Mickey is feeling downright fatherly and decides to become a pimp, with a little cocaine business on the side.

“No one’s going to take care of Mickey, and being a criminal just comes natural to him,” says Voight. “He’s envious of Ray because the guy seems to have so much power. Mickey needs to show his son that he can make it, that he can be an important person.” Of course, Voight concedes, “Mickey is always stepping in s–t. He has big dreams but never much success, which is apparent to everyone but himself.”

Then there’s Abby, who will beg Ray for absolution—and get nowhere. “Ray is such a hypocrite, screwing women left and right,” says Malcomson. “But he doesn’t fall in love with them. Ray may be emotionally and physically distant, but he’s not going to leave Abby, certainly not while the kids are still in the house.”

However, Abby will leave Ray this season, at least temporarily, when she tries to reconnect with her former self. “She goes home to her Southie roots in Boston and checks back in with her family, which is quite a circus,” Malcomson says. “It’s a chance to see who Abby really is, as opposed to the lonely, frustrated woman who is out of her element in Hollywood.” We meet her brother and sister and an old boyfriend, as well as her father, who is “vile and unnecessarily cruel, a real d–k,” Malcomson says. “You understand why she escaped that situation and married Ray, whose protective manliness and mythic bravery is very appealing to her. But, let’s face it, Ray’s also been a f—ing curse.”

She gets no argument from her leading man, who readily admits to the hypocrisy charge. “Ray is very primitive that way,” Schreiber says. “He lives by an arcane code of masculinity, where men are expected to cheat but women can’t, which is ridiculous and laughable. And, like a lot of victims of abuse, he’s extremely self-indulgent, very in his own world.”

But the guy’s not all bad. “As a father, Ray always provides. In fact, I’d even call him a good father when he’s not juggling that with being a homicidal maniac,” says Schreiber, who is expecting his longtime partner, actress Naomi Watts, and their two young sons, Sasha and Sam, to drop by the set and hang with him at lunch. “I empathize greatly with Ray’s commitment to his children and find it beautiful,” he says. “As much as I love being on this series, it’s very hard for me to be working right now when the kids are out of school and I could be with them. I just wish someone would hire me for a family movie so that my legacy is more than a series of dark, angry men. My kids have never seen my work.”

If it’s any consolation, the Oscar-winning Voight thinks Schreiber is a star for the ages. “Liev reminds me of the great old-time movie idols—Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas—the kind of tough, grounded guys you could count on to rise to the occasion and get the job done, the kind they don’t make anymore,” Voight says. “Hey, if I was in a jam, I’d hire Liev!”

Schreiber is flattered by the compliment, but he’s not buying it. “I guess I’m good in a pinch, like if there’s an accident on the road and you need help, but I’m really pretty scatterbrained,” he says. “I’m not focused ororganized or calm, composed and confident like Ray. Hell, half the time, I can’t even find my glasses.”

Ray Donovan returns Sunday, July 12, 9/8c, Showtime.