Empire returned from its mid-season break last night, and it did not disappoint fans. Last years mid-season finale ended with a cliffhanger that threatened to send one of the shows biggest stars to prison. That star, Jussie Smollett, sat down with ABC Radio to talk about what fans should expect from his character, and the show as a whole, this season.
“With Jamal, he’s definitely going through it… He needs a vacation. He needs a staycation. He’s just going through it, man," explains Smollett. His character kills off his mother's former lover, played by Taye Diggs. “He accidentally killed Angelo [DuBois]! So that sucks. But, he’s also dealing with the effects of what’s happened to his family.”
Smollett also teased fans on what to expect from his crazy on-screen family this season. “We’ve seen… everything that [the Lyons] went through… the things that may frustrate us or annoy us or, ‘God why can’t they just be happy?’,” stated Jussie. “Now we start to see them, still [with] the same amount of drama, still the same amount of craziness, but at least, with each other, [all five Lyons] are finding a kind of a middle ground.”
“Sounds like Game of Thrones. This is hip-hop Game of Thrones. That’s Empire,” opines Smollett. With the amount of bodies dropping on Empire, he might be right.