Photo by Chuck Hodes
Photo by Chuck Hodes
"We didn't
know it
was serious
or a piece of
art until
we took
it up to
Sundance &
the white
people
were like
."
SXSW.COM | N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6 | SXS W O R L D 1 3
he sat in the hush of the darkened theatre and thought it was a
bomb. "On 125th street at the Magic Johnson theater, it played like
a comedy," he says. "We didn't know it was serious or a piece of
art until we took it up to Sundance and the white people were like
." Daniels dissolves into laughter.
He went on to helm The Paperboy and 2013's Lee Daniels' The
Butler, featuring an all-star cast led by Forrest Whittaker that
earned over $175 million at the box office. Then Daniels set his
sights on TV and blew up the zeitgeist to the tune of 17 million
viewers with music mogul soap Empire, currently in its third
season, which he co-created with Danny Strong.
Before you can become a legend though, you start out as a man,
and like most, Daniels has struggled, fighting such demons as drug
addiction, racism, homophobia and childhood abuse. But it's the
way in which he bares his struggles that has had such a profound
effect on his work—and thus on his audiences. "I'm gay. I'm black.
I realize that the fight has been so hard on me because of the color
of my skin. And because I've been so open and honest about who it
is that I am," he says. "It's very powerful to live in your truth and
to work in your truth. And actors know it's your truth so they roll
along with you. So I'm able to get Queen Latifah to do some things
she ordinarily wouldn't do."
Latifah—along with Jude Demorest, Ryan Destiny and Brittany
O'Grady—stars in the modern Dreamgirls drama, Star, which is
set to premiere on Fox in early 2017. Daniels, who created the show
with Tom Donaghy, wrote and directed the first two episodes.
"In Star, you get early me … what happened when I first landed
in Hollywood," he says. "I've talked about everything in my life
except that part of me that I'm not proud of, stuff I did to survive,
so creating and busting down doors and doing things maybe that
weren't legal ... Exposing that is healing for me."
Daniels, who grew up hooked on the TV magic of Norman Lear,
longs for that more politically incorrect era of storytelling and
worked hard to ground Empire in a place of uncomfortable truths.
Still, Daniels' transition into network television, where he suddenly
wasn't the only one running the show, was a bit of a rude awak-
ening. "When I jumped into television, I didn't understand the idea
of collaboration, because as an independent filmmaker, you are the
boss. I never took 'no' for an answer and I always did it my way,"
he says. "So I was thrown into a body of suits with Fox; that was
a first for me. That was sort of jarring."
Now that Daniels has proven himself with Empire, the process
with Star is smoother. That is, except when it comes to casting. "I
was really excited about Empire because at the time, no network
wanted to do black shows," he says. "Now I can't even get black
actors right now for my new show. It's crazy. Everybody's already
employed."
Lee Daniels will be a Film Keynote speaker at the
SXSW 2017 conference.
