Terrence Howard introduced at a information convention on Friday that he plans to file a lawsuit towards the powerhouse expertise company CAA, claiming the corporate satisfied him to take a lowball wage on Empire as a result of it had a battle of curiosity.
Howard was flanked by his longtime accomplice, Mira Pak, and his attorneys at a information convention held on the workplace of The Cochran Agency, the place he known as for “accountability” after claiming he was paid, on the most, $325,000 per episode to star because the ruthless music mogul Lucious Lyon for six seasons on the hit Fox sequence. It is unclear when Howard will file the swimsuit.
In keeping with The Hollywood Reporter, the actor claims that the determine is much beneath what he ought to have been compensated. One among his attorneys, James Bryant, claimed on the information convention that Howard requested what he could be getting paid to behave within the sequence. Bryant claimed Howard acquired paid $325,000 per episode “at the height of what I was being paid” in season 6, and he was “never given a producer credit even though I rewrote most of the scenes and acted in the capacity of producer.”
Howard went on to assert that he was woefully underpaid by as a lot as 50 p.c. Bryant stated the lawsuit will state that the company supplied Howard with deceptive data over salaries. Bryant claims Howard, because the main actor of a serious sequence, ought to have been getting paid equally to what Kevin Spacey was making on Home of Playing cards or Jon Hamm on Mad Males.
At its peak, Empire — additionally starring Taraji P. Henson — drew a whopping 17 million viewers. That determine got here within the season 1 finale. Viewership, nonetheless, steadily dropped after season 3, and when the sequence wrapped, Empire was drawing just below 3 million viewers, per Deadline. However there is not any denying the acclaimed sequence was thought-about a monumental hit.
“Discovery will show that this was racism,” stated considered one of Howard’s legal professionals, Carlos Moore. “You won’t find in discovery that a white actor — Oscar-nominated, Golden Globe-nominated — was treated like that.” Howard earned Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for his function as DJay within the 2005 drama Hustle & Movement.
As for the battle of curiosity, Howard alleges he was satisfied to take a low wage as a result of his brokers prioritized the company’s personal curiosity and the present’s producers as a result of CAA additionally represented the producers. ET has reached out to CAA for remark.
“I trusted CAA to look after me,” stated Howard, who can be being repped by Carlos Moore of The Carlos Moore Regulation Group. “And they looked after themselves.”
After the information convention, Howard spoke to Rolling Stone and defined why he’s going to sue CAA.
“You have all your agents telling you that you got the best deal possible, telling you, ‘Everything is good. Don’t worry, you’re going to get your money on the back-end. After we get to a hundred episodes, we’re going into syndication, and man, you’re gonna get paid, don’t rock the boat,'” he informed the journal. “I drank the Kool-Aid. I believed that I was going to get paid, or that I was getting compensated properly, but I wasn’t. I just didn’t want to piss off CAA and Fox. They’re big companies to go to war against. But sooner or later you’ve got to stand up, because they’re just trampling over the rights of the artists.”
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