'Empire' is coming back! Mariah Carey hits the studio

Mariah Carey is set to guest-star on Empire after years of rumors. Good friend (and Precious director) Lee Daniels has been teasing a Carey cameo since the first season and decided enough was enough. “I said, ‘It’s time to put Mariah on the show because I am going to be a liar to the world and to her,’” says the show’s co-creator and EP with a laugh.

Carey will portray Kitty, a singer brought in by Cookie (Taraji P. Henson) to duet with Jamal (Jussie Smollett). The Lyon matriarch thinks working with a star as big as Kitty will help her son deal with his PTSD and stage fright after being shot near the end of last season. “She’s the one that sees everybody’s always telling Jamal what to do,” says Smollett. “From Lucious to Cookie to the media to his fans. Kitty is a person who’s a much bigger star than Jamal and she’s there to kind of be like, ‘Stop. He’s human.’”

An unabashed Carey fan, Smollett says it was a surreal experience. “I’m just like, ‘Yo, that’s Mariah Carey talking to me, telling me how to sing something on a duet with her,’” he says excitedly. “Get the f—k up out of here!”

While Carey is currently slated only for the Oct. 5 episode, Daniels says he hopes Kitty will return and promises her Empire wardrobe is appropriately dramatic. Teases Daniels, “Lots of hair and fishnets and stilettos!”

Empire returns on Sept. 21 at 9 p.m. ET on Fox.

Fox Faces Class Action Lawsuit for Allegedly Causing Lockdowns While Filming Empire at Juvenile Detention Center

Empire is stirring up drama before its latest season even hits airwaves.

Fox has been hit with a class action lawsuit stemming from the filming of the popular series at a Chicago juvenile detention center – the setting for the first two episodes of season 2 – according to court documents obtained by Deadline.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. Northern District Court of Illinois, alleges that while filming at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center in June, July and August 2015, Empire caused three separate lockdowns.

"Numerous areas that are essential to the JTDC's mission of educating and rehabilitating the children housed there – including the JTDC's school, its facilities for family visits, its only outdoor recreation yard, its library, and its chapel – were placed off limits so that Fox's agents and employees could use them to stage and film the show," the lawsuit says.

Subsequently, the suit alleges, the children at the facility were ordered to be confined to their cells for "days on end," causing "psychological and emotional traumas." Further, visits from families were "interrupted, cut back, or effectively eliminated."

First airing in September 2015, Empire's season 2 premiere and second episode centered on Lucious Lyon's (Terrence Howard) confinement to a prison. The suit says that the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center was used as a "realistic prison facility."

"The children at JTDC, meanwhile, were placed under restrictions more severe than those governing many adult jails," the suit alleges. "Putting the children housed at the JTDC on lockdown so that the Defendants could use the facility to film a profitable television show was a breach of fiduciary duty, and it violated the children's rights under the U.S. Constitution and state law. The profits gained from this misconduct were unjustly obtained."

The claim, filed by two, unidentified juvenile former residents on behalf of up to 400 other class members, names Twentieth Century Fox Television, Inc., Fox Broadcasting Company, Inc., Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc., Fox Entertainment Group, Inc., Fox Networks Group, Inc., and Fox Television Group, as well as Cook County and the center's superintendent.

Both plaintiffs – who are represented by Eimer Stahl LLP of Chicago – are seeking profits Fox made from the September episodes. The suit claims that advertisers paid an "astonishing" $750,000 for a 30-second spot in the premiere episode, and $600,000 for a similar ad in the second episode.

Fox declined to comment on the suit.

 

(PEOPLE)

Empire: Mariah Carey finally confirmed for role in season 3

The singer will make her long-awaited debut on the Fox hit as an artist who collaborates with Jamal

 

 

It’s finally happening: After two seasons of speculation, Mariah Carey will appear on the third season of Empire. Fox co-chariman Dana Walden made the announcement during her TCA panel Monday in Beverly Hills. 

Carey will pay a singer named Kitty who collaborates with Jamal (Jussie Smollett) at Empire and helps him craft an “explosive new song.” She will appear on the Oct. 5 episode. 

Empire co-creator Lee Daniels, a close personal friend of Carey’s, has teased an appearance by the singer for the past couple of seasons. At the beginning of season 2, Daniels told EW that Carey wanted them to craft a character for her and not play herself. “I think it would be great to play her but she doesn’t want to play her so that’s what we’re doing,” said Daniels last September. “She’s giving us the hard assignment of trying to create a character which we’re doing right now.” 

Empire’s third season premieres Sept. 21 at 9 p.m. on Fox.

Source: EW