Lee Daniels Clarifies What He Meant By Calling Working On ‘Empire’ Horrible

Apparently, working on Empire wasn’t as bad as Lee Daniels recently made it out to be.

According to The Hollywood Reporter , Daniels is now walking back his statements that working on Empire was “the worst experience” due to the red tape he had to work around. Daniels made his new statement on SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen Live while promoting The Deliverance . When Cohen asked if what he said was true, Daniels said, “That’s so not true.”

“What I meant was the worst experience because all of my films have been independently financed it was the first time that I was taking notes from anybody. You have to understand, no one gave me notes to do anything.”

He added that it’s normal for a studio to give notes on a project, “but it was like, ‘What?’ It was jarring for me.”

His new statements might seem like he’s walking back the perception he gave of Empire being a complete chore to make. But when you look at his original statements to The Film Stage , what he said then isn’t that different from what he’s saying now.

In his interview with The Film Stage, he said he wanted to do a network project so he could gain experience of working with a studio, including receiving notes. But the experience of constantly being checked made it “the worst experience.” The only upside, he said, was the amount of money he made. That money helped him put his children through college.

The Deliverance is currently streaming on Netflix.

The post Lee Daniels Clarifies What He Meant By Calling Working On ‘Empire’ Horrible appeared first on Blavity .