Academy Award nominee Terrence Howard has filed a lawsuit against the Creative Artists Agency LLC (CAA), accusing them of fraudulently persuading him to accept less money for his popular “Empire” role.
In the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Howard, who played music mogul Lucious Lyon for six seasons, says CAA also represented the producers of “Empire” in a lucrative package deal for the agency and that the details of the deal were hidden from him.
Howard states that he received a lower salary than “Mad Men” star Jon Hamm and “House of Cards” star Kevin Spacey even though “Empire” had a more extensive viewership than those shows.
“Not only did it become abundantly clear that his agents led him on a path to rely on information that was misleading, he discovered that this was the result of the fact that CAA was not acting in his best interest, but in the interest of their own financial benefit as well as the interest of the Production Companies and the producers, Daniels and Strong,” the complaint reads. “Under normal circumstances, had CAA not been the packaging agent, and had CAA not been concurrently representing the Production Companies, where their sole financial interest would have been the 10% fee from the compensation received by Howard, they would have most certainly fought for Howard in a manner that most producers are accustomed to seeing CAA agents engage in.”
Terrence Howard is suing talent agency CAA for his salary on the show 'Empire,' alleging a breach of fiduciary duty.
— Episodes (@episodesent) December 10, 2023
He claims that the show's producers shared the same agency as him and his agent, who convinced him to sign a detrimental deal in favor of the producers. pic.twitter.com/krZ8NeqtDt
By comparison, for his role as “Mad Men’s” Don Draper, Hamm earned $350,000 per episode at the show’s peak—$4 million per season. Spacey’s annual salary from Netflix’s “House of Cards” was reported to be $450,000 per episode, putting his salary at the time at over $6 million.
The practice of agencies accepting packaging fees has since been prohibited after the Writers Guild of America fought to reform the practice in 2020.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, Howard shared that while he believed CAA’s actions were racially motivated, he could not prove it.
“I can’t say for certain this was a racial issue, but I can’t imagine another counterpart – a white counterpart – with the same accolades, name recognition and numbers that I had, receiving the lowball pay that I was receiving,” he told Rolling Stone. “I drank the Kool-Aid. I believed that I was going to get paid, or that I was getting compensated properly, but I wasn’t. I just didn’t want to piss off CAA and Fox. They’re big companies to go to war against. But sooner or later, you’ve got to stand up because they’re just trampling over the rights of the artists.”
Howard is seeking an unspecified amount in compensatory and punitive damages.
“Discovery will show that this was racism,” Howard’s attorney, Carlos Moore, said in a statement.
