Fox exec: Howard's history didn't come up
Allegations that the "Empire" star has been violent toward multiple women never came up in casting him in two Fox series, says co-CEO Dana Walden, who said she only heard about the cases -- which go back to at least 2001 -- last month.
From the Television Critics Association's winter meetings in Pasadena, Calif.:
"Empire," which Fox on Saturday announced had been picked up for a second season, is the new bright star in Fox's firmament and Lafayette HIll's Terrence Howard is at the very center of it as the ailing Lucious Lyon, a man with a violent temper and a contentious relationship with his ex-wife, Cookie (Taraji P. Henson)
In real life, Howard, who'll also headline later this year in the network's "Wayward Pines," from M. Night Shyamalan, has been dogged by accusations of violence, both against women in his life and against women he doesn't appear to have known.
When executives are casting actors, does the fact that someone's been the subject of a couple of restraining orders and that there have been allegations of violence against women come up at all in the conversation, I asked Fox Television Group co-chairs and CEOs Dana Walden and Gary Newman during a Fox news conference Saturday.
"We've been working with Terrence now for just about a year and it's been a fantastic experience," said Walden, who described Howard as "so professional" and said "our experience with Terrence has been excellent."
"We cast Terrence because our executive producers Lee Daniels and Danny Strong and Brian Grazer thought that he was the best actor for that particular role," Walden said. "Our experience was...being fans of films he's done in the past. So it seemed like a little bit of a no-brainer."
Walden said "we didn't really become of any of this situation you're talking about until December," so "it wasn't part of the conversation when we cast him."
When I questioned that -- because a simple Google search would have turned up stories -- she replied, "Well, I can only tell you when we became aware of it. At this point, we do know about them," but their experience with him, she repeated, has been a good one.