The best Empire season two casting announcement, by far, was the one that revealed Marisa Tomei will play a lesbian billionaire named Mimi who loves “hip-hop music, social trends, high-end fashion and beautiful women.” There are entire shows with less intrigue than that sentence. The character hasn’t been on screen for a single second and it’s already worthy of at least one spin-off. Impossible to beat. Let’s be very clear about that up front.
But if Empire mastermind Lee Daniels had his way, there would have been a clear frontrunner for second place: Chris Rock as a jailbird cannibal. From The Hollywood Reporter‘s big behind-the-scenes story on the show.
According to multiple insiders, Fox brass shot down an early idea to have Chris Rock’s character, who’s in jail with Lucious, be a cannibal in the first episode of the season. But Daniels, who directed the season opener, is said to have ignored the mandate and shot the Rock story as initially envisioned, including one particularly grotesque scene featuring the actor with a plate of human body parts before him. Rock agreed to return to the series’ Chicago set for reshoots this summer, where sources say the cannibal plotline was scaled back to the point of (being) barely detectable at the network’s insistence.
Here’s a fun little game: Imagine yourself as the Fox executive who told Lee Daniels, in no uncertain terms, that your big famous guest star was not allowed to be a cannibal. Imagine then getting the raw footage of “a particularly grotesque scene” that featured Chris Rock “with a plate of human body parts before him.” Imagine your face. You’d probably rub your temples down to the bone.
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)
