*Lee Daniels sat down with Billboard.com to discuss his new Queen Latifah-led Fox drama “Star,” which will premiere on Fox during the midseason hiatus of his other Fox series “Empire.”
How will Star compare with Empire?
It is the complete antithesis of Empire. I don’t know whether you ever saw the first 15 minutes of John Waters’ Female Trouble, but these girls will do whatever it takes. They’ll murder. They’ll f— you. They’ll rob you. [The characters] Star and Simone are very, very poor. They come from the foster-care system, and we explore the atrocities that happen there.
The show debuts in early 2017. Where are you in production?
We’re shooting the second episode. I just left a rehearsal for a vogue number. That performance that Teyana Taylor did at the MTV Video Music Awards? Well, we’re going to get down in the dirt with mine. You’ll see the girls with the gay boys voguing in a way [TV audiences] have yet to see. It will be very much like Paris Is Burning, which influenced me growing up. I told Queen Latifah that we should remake Paris Is Burning as a musical.
You also have said that Star is inspired by Dreamgirls.
When I was 16, I stole my mother’s Eldorado, and I snuck into Dreamgirls on Broadway. I haven’t been affected by anything in that way until I saw Hamilton. Dreamgirls affected African-Americans. Denzel Washington said Dreamgirls was the reason he was in the business. So when I decided to put Star together, I started thinking about movies and situations that have influenced me.
What are the challenges of creating dramas around music and musicians?
One is making sure the stories are seamlessly married to the music and vice versa — that a show tune doesn’t come from out of nowhere.
When you were casting, what was more important: musical talent or acting chops?
Ultimately, I go with the actor. It’s really hard to find someone who can act — to be the definitive character that you’ve written — and can sing. Really hard. So when Star — Jude Demorest — walked into my office, I knew that the universe was working for me. She was so eerily the character that I wrote. I told her to her face, “I don’t like you,” because I didn’t want her to know how much I did like her. It took me forever to find Jamal and Hakeem. She came in right off the bat.
That had to be devastating for her to hear.
She reminds me of that often.
Did you write Queen Latifah’s role in Star with her in mind?
I did. She plays Carlotta, a woman that had a hit in the ’90s but ended up in the streets. Carlotta has turned her life over to God, but she’s still a gangster. She walks on both sides of the curb — in very expensive wigs.
What does she represent to you as an artist?
She’s a true crossover, similar to what Diana Ross accomplished in the ’60s. Yet she remains a girl from the hood. And her voice — she sings gospel in our first number, but a new type of gospel. We’ll also hear her sing some R&B and do some classic and current rap.
You have likened Empire to Dynasty. What classic TV show does Star most resemble?
It’s more like Good Times: very edgy.
People forget that about Good Times.
As we’ve progressed as a society and in entertainment, we’ve become so politically correct that we can’t tell the truth. It sucks, and I’m not the only one who feels that way. You don’t know what I had to do at Fox to get the word “faggot” in the Empire pilot.
Read the entire Q&A at Billboard.com.
We Publish News 24/7. Don’t Miss A Story. Click HERE to SUBSCRIBE to Our Newsletter Now!
