If you saw the first season of blockbuster TV2 show Empire earlier this year, then there’s zero chance you would’ve forgotten her. Strutting out of prison in a white fur coat and leopard-print miniskirt, Cookie Lyon was out for more than a good time after 17 years behind bars for a crime she didn’t commit – she was out for everything she could get!
For Taraji P. Henson, who plays the viper-tongued, shoe-hurling diva, it was easy to get under the skin of one of the most arresting characters to hit our screens in 2015. Rags to riches is something she knows all about.
“I came from the ’hood. It was rough. I went to school with criminals,” says Taraji, 45, whose name means “hope” in Swahili. “I watched my mom get robbed twice – once at gunpoint. It haunted me.”
But despite the hard scrabble of growing up in Washington DC with a single mother, the little girl dared to dream big. By the age of five, she’d decided she was going to be an actress. But it was a dream she almost had to let go when she didn’t get into drama school.
“I thought I couldn’t act,” Taraji says.
Taraji playing Lyon on hip-hop drama Empire
Instead, she opted to study electrical engineering, but a failed pre-calculus exam set her back on course. When she told her dad Boris, a janitor, he said, “I’m glad you failed. Now you need to get back to acting. That’s what you’re supposed to be doing!”
Soon after, Taraji enrolled at university, where she majored in theatre arts and held down two jobs to help her pay the fees. In the mornings, she worked as a secretary at the Pentagon and in the evenings, she was a singing and dancing waitress on a dinner-cruise boat.
Fate intervened again when she fell pregnant in her first year at uni. But this time instead of giving up, Taraji forged on. She became a single mum to son Marcel in 1994, while doggedly completing her degree. In 1996, aged 26, she packed up her toddler and her few belongings to set up a new life in Los Angeles. She had no connections, no house and no job. The following year, Marcel’s father was murdered. Taraji had just $1400 to her name.
“It was a struggle,” Taraji admits. “But my son grew as my career grew. I never had a nanny. I took TV roles so I could be at home with Marcel. I wasn’t making my millions, but I was able to fulfil my dreams and be a mother.”
The breakthrough
Taraji enjoyed bit parts in ER, CSI, House and Boston Legal. Then, in 2005, her movie career took off when she played the role of a prostitute in the critically acclaimed Hustle & Flow. Three years later, she played Brad Pitt’s adoptive mother in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – a role she almost turned down.
“I didn’t take it seriously,” Taraji confesses. “I mean, they had Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt. Why would they want me? I thought it was a runaround and I decided to hold an epic garage sale that day instead.”
Luckily, her agent called and gave her the hard word to ditch the sale and get to the audition pronto. Not only did she get it but the part led to a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the 2009 Academy Awards too.
“I lost, but it was the best time of my life,” says Taraji. “Brad and Angelina rushed up to me and said, ‘Are you OK?’ They were more concerned about my name not being called than I was.”
Despite the Oscar nod, true fame didn’t arrive until the actress landed the role of Cookie, the stroppy jailbird trying to wrestle control of her family’s billion-dollar, hip-hop business in Empire, which returned to TV2 on September 29.
Taraji knew she’d made it the day her business manager told her she’d crossed the million-dollar mark. “I was like, ‘Really? I’m going shopping!’ But now I can finally afford everything, people want to give me all kinds of stuff for free. Where were you when I was broke?!”
A strong single mum for son Marcel
Although hitting the big-time has given her all the trappings of success, it hasn’t as yet led her to love and Taraji makes no secret that she’s on the lookout. “I want a life partner,” she says. “A real one. I had a guy, but – to cut to the chase – he was star-struck. They fall for the lady on screen. Face it, I don’t wake up looking like Beyoncé. I’ll have to start hunting abroad.”
There’s a certain symmetry that after two decades in Hollywood, Taraji finally cracked it by playing a character who, like herself, has had to hustle for everything she’s got. The role has literally been her “fortune Cookie”, leapfrogging her further than all the roles in her 20-year acting career. And Taraji’s loving every minute of it.
She smiles, “I came from nothing. I was deprived all my life, so when you get money, you go big!”
.jpg)