Queen Cookie seems like she's one of a kind, but, in fact, she bears some resemblance to other music mavens and lady bosses.
Vulture thinks Cookie is a mix of industry mavens: "40 percent Foxy Brown, 40 percent Lil' Kim, 20 percent Mary J. Blige," because these women embody "her sacrificial incarceration [that] no doubt helped put Empire Records on the map."
Daniels's grandmother and drug-dealing sister are Cookie's kick-ass predecessors, although his mother really did beat him with a broom. He told Adweek "my mother's a little bit of Cookie, but really my grandmother is Cookie, [as is] my sister. My grandmother was a corrupt politician in the '60s. She had many of the judges in her pocket in Philadelphia — and she carried a gun. She would get blacks to come out and vote. And my sister was a drug dealer, as many of my friends were."
Taraji P. Henson herself says she draws inspiration from her own father. In an interview with Harper's Bazaar, she said, "He had no buffer. He spoke the truth." Cookie, like Henson's father, doesn't care much about being politically correct.
Just like with Lucious, Cookie has folks claiming the show stole their story. Sophia Eggleston claims that Empire used her life story, suing the creators for $300 million.
