‘Empire’ is fearlessly tackling Black Lives Matter

The Season 3 premiere episode of “Empire” kicked off a conversation about gun violence in hip hop, stemming from Jamal’s (Jussie Smollett) shooting in Season 2. Now the second episode of the season, “Sin That Amends,” has waded in even deeper with a cliffhanger about police brutality.

At the end of the episode, Andre (Trai Byers) was trying to pick up some of his stuff from the apartment he shared with his late wife when two police officers confronted him about recent robberies in the neighborhood. Dressed in a gray hoodie, Andre tried to remain cool in the face of an escalating situation but was violently thrown to the ground and cuffed by the officers.

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The “Empire” executive producers tell us that the show is going to fearlessly confront this issue the way the show has confronted many other social issues.

From the beginning, the show “dived into social issues, and we’re just going to keep doing that. The issues are provocative and dynamic and need to be discussed and that’s what we do on the show,” says EP Danny Strong.

“‘Empire’ is fearless in talking about what is current, what is really happening, whether it’s about bipolar disease in the black community, whether it’s being a gay male in the black community, whether it’s being on the down low. So with that said, of course we’re going to tackle issues like black lives matter because it matters to us,” adds EP Sanaa Hamri.

Further, rather than come at the issue from a singular point of view, the EPs say the show aims to look at Black Lives Matter from a variety of viewpoints.

“We’re trying to reflect the world, the world of the characters we tell stories about. We represent a lot of points of view because these people are individuals with a wide range of points of view and philosophies and politics and everything else,” says EP Ilene Chaiken. “So no, we’re not proselytizing from one point of view, we’re representing the world as we see it.”

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“The audience can make the decision on what is the right thing to do,” adds Hamri. “When we were doing the song for Jamal in the first episode, called ‘Need Freedom,’ and it was also called ‘Free Freda,’ we had added the names of, at that time, different people who had been shot by the police because it’s necessary and it’s part of the story, part of our lives now today, which we’re not afraid of.”

“Empire” airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on FOX.

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