My Publicist Note Book

With its flashy mix of music and melodrama, Fox's Empire ruled the ratings this spring — and topped itself, week after week...  Taraji P. Henson knew everybody would be buzzing about her someday. Her father had a premonition. It was 2006, and Boris Henson was nearing the end of an ill-fated battle with cancer. Soon his actress-daughter would not only be attending the Academy Awards but performing that year's Best Original Song, "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp," from her film   Hustle & Flow , which costarred Terrence Howard. As she sat at her father's hospital bedside, filling him in on the major career milestone she was about to reach — one he wouldn't live to see — "He was like, 'Baby, that ain't nothin'. You are going to be a sensation,'" the  Empire  star recounts now. "He was looking off into the distance, and I think he saw what was coming. "At the time, I was like, 'What you see? Shoot, I wan...

"The Minority Report" host becomes the latest black lead on the small screen, joining a rapidly growing roster of talent on newly ordered  prime time  series. Comedy Central's Friday announcement that  Larry Wilmore  would take over the time slot previously occupied by  Stephen Colbert  with his new  Minority Report  caps a major week for black leads on the small screen. STORY: Early Trends Emerge as Broadcasters Bet on Black Leads, Politics, Terror  The Daily Show  correspondent, who will launch his new series in the 11:30 p.m. slot starting in January, joins a rapidly growing roster of black leads on newly ordered prime-time broadcast scripted series. The emergence of black leads was one of the earliest trends to emerge from the wave of broadcast network pickups this week.  ABC on Thursday ordered  Anthony Anderson  comedy   Black-ish   to series.  That ...

Eugene Allen, the man whose life and career were the inspiration for Lee Daniels’ The Butler. He served 8 different presidents as a butler in the White House. On August 16, you will be able to see him depicted as Cecil Gaines.  ‪#‎ LeeDanielsTheButler‬ ! The film follows the life of Cecil Gaines, an African-American domestic worker at the White House (played by  Forest Whitaker ) who worked for ten different U.S. presidents from the mid-1950s onward, with Robin Williams playing  Dwight Eisenhower , James Marsden playing  John F. Kennedy , Liev Schreiber playing Lyndon Johnson, and John Cusack playing Richard Nixon, among others.  The suggestion is that President Obama was invited to play himself in a brief scene near the end. President Barack Obama does NOT make his big-screen acting debut in the upcoming White House drama "Lee Daniels' The Butler." "We wanted him to do it," Daniels said, and it was in the script for him to make an ap...

Jane Fonda may be a liberal activist, but her politics didn't figure into her decision to take on the role of Nancy Reagan in "Lee Daniels' The Butler." A new clip from the movie shows Fonda's First Lady talking to White House butler Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker). Reagan invites him to a state dinner, but "not as a butler, Cecil -- as a guest." In a sound bite following the clip, Fonda addresses her controversial casting. "The idea that I could play Nancy Reagan was just too much to resist," she says. "I don't think that whatever differences there might be in our politics really matters." "Lee Daniels' The Butler" features an all-star cast including; Oprah Winfrey,  Cuba Gooding Jr., Terrence Howard,  Robin Williams,  Alan Rickman,  Melissa Leo,  Minka Kelly,  John Cusack,  James Marsden,   Mariah Carey. Lee Daniels' The Butler   is an upcoming 2013 American   historical drama...

Striking a seductive pose next to Terrence,  Oprah just wrapped her last scene in the Lee Daniels-directed history drama. The television legend has been busy on the set of director Lee Daniels' "The Butler," Daniels' next film is "The Butler,"  which focuses on Eugene Allen, an African-American man who worked as a butler in the White House between 1952 and 1986.  Filming on "The Butler" has been going on in New Orleans over the last month, and  Winfrey took to her Twitter account on Monday night  to update fans about the progress. @Oprah   Oprah Winfrey Director  @LeeDaniels  ,  @JaneFonda  as Nancy Reagan , Alan Rickman as Prez Reagan and me gonna be a long nit. Winfrey hasn't acted in a film since appearing in "Beloved" in 1998. (She has lent her voice to a number of animated projects in the interim.) Despite her relative lack of recent experience,  Daniels told HuffPost   that she has been a dream collaborator...