The Empire season finale aired last night March 18. Fans attentively tuned in for two hours to experience the conclusion of the drama-filled hip-hop soap opera season that has drawn consistently high ratings. Co-creator of Empire, Danny Strong shared his views on the finale's cliffhanger and its touch on race, class and social issues.
In an interview with Deadline, Strong explained that he and the show's executive producer, Ilene Chaiken, co-wrote the finale episode. At first, he didn't view the episode as a cliffhanger.
"...I didn't really view it as a cliffhanger because for me, it was the fact that we resolved Lucious' ALS this season and who was going to inherit the empire..." Strong told Deadline.
Strong believes Empire's ability to stir conversations on race is due to racial issues being a "volatile" subject for people.
"I think there's a lot of shame in American race relations," he told Deadline. "There's a lot of suppressed guilt that lashes itself out still. I see that all the time, and whereas opposed to sort of trying to address the issue in an up-front way, they're attacking and thus perpetuating the problem thinking that they're being sophisticated and post-racial, when, in fact, they're being completely regressive."
Although Strong stands by the notion that Empire is not about race and "the finale is not a race episode whatsoever," he believes the hip-hop drama has the ability to throw in relevant racially charged phrases like "black lives matter" (used in the finale) in an organic way that's not "preachy".
Strong later explains that he's only interested in projects that have a social justice connection.
"I'm not interested in working on things that don't have some element of social justice or aren't addressing some type of social issue in a way that I think is important, or interesting, or layered," he said. "Lee's [Lee Daniels] the same way..."
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Strong explains how he balanced the many characters in the show's plot.
"The stories stem from my ADD. Early on, I liked the idea of having a fast-moving plot with intersecting stories," he told THR. "Lee and I loved the idea of subverting the genre and having a gritty, urban family drama at the core of it that tackles mental illness and homophobia but combining it with a fast-moving soap genre that has multiple plotlines of different genres -- the music plotline, the crime plotline, the family plotline. That's always how I envisioned the show, and you never know if it's going to work."
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