Taraji P. Henson recently discussed her acting career and how she had to fire her entire team for failing to advance her career following the success of her character Cookie Lyon in the drama television series Empire.
On Tuesday, the 53-year-old revealed in an interview with the SAG-AFTRA Foundation that she got rid of everyone after she had no roles or endorsements set up after the series, which ran from 2015 until 2020, the Atlanta Black Star reported.
When asked what was her best acting business decision, Henson said firing her team was something she had to do for herself and her career.
“Firing everybody after Cookie,” she said in a clip shared on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Everybody had to f**kin’ go. Where is my deal? Where’s my commercial? Cookie was at the top of the fashion game. Where is my endorsement? What did you have set up for after this? That’s why y’all haven’t seen me in so long. They had nothing set up.”
OH SHE’S DONE PLAYING WITH YALLL pic.twitter.com/S0vGpDFAUj
— Welington (@WelingtonOnAir) December 20, 2023
Henson said her team wanted her to star in another show starring the popular character and that she would have been open to doing it.
“All they wanted was another Cookie show, and I said, ‘I’ll do it, but it has to be right. The people deserve… She’s too beloved for y’all to f**k it up.’ And so, when they didn’t get it right, I was like, ‘Well, that’s it,’ and then they had nothing else. ‘You’re all f**kin’ fired,” Henson explained.
The award-winning actor said it took some time before she realized this after having Stockholm syndrome. She encouraged audience members and said, “You are the prize; don’t you ever forget that.”
We previously reported that Henson recently talked about quitting acting due to the low pay and unfair treatment she received throughout her Hollywood career.
“I’m just tired of working so hard, being gracious at what I do, getting paid a fraction of the cost,” Henson said tearfully to Gayle King in a recent interview with Sirius XM. “I’m tired of hearing my sisters say the same thing over and over; you get tired. I hear people go, ‘You work a lot.’ I have to; the math ain’t mathin’.”
She continued, “And when you start working a lot, you have a team. Big bills come with what we do. We don’t do this alone. The fact that we’re up here, there’s a whole entire team behind us. They have to get paid. So when you hear someone saying, ‘Oh, such and such made $10 million,’ no, that didn’t make it to their account. Know that off the top, Uncle Sam is getting 50%, OK? So, do the math; now we have $5 million.”
