Actor Terrence Howard recently sued Creative Artists firm LLC, aka CAA, on December 8, claiming that the firm agency deceitfully persuaded him to accept a lower salary for his Empire television series role. As per Deadline, he said,
“It’s time for change. We need accountability. We need access. We need to be able to share in the profits.”
During a press conference held on Friday at The Cochran Firm, Terrence Howard accused his previous agency of having a lucrative packaging agreement with Imagine, the creators and producers of the show. The actor was thus defrauded of “a much higher salary given the success of the show,” according to Howard and his legal team, as per Deadline.
The news of Terrence Howard was first published on Instagram by account user The Shade Room. Once it got viral, people took to the post’s comment section to support Terrence Howard.
Internet reacts as Empire star Terrence Howard decides to sue CAA
Terrence Howard, a former Empire actor recently trending on X (formerly known as Twitter), revealed that he is suing CAA for allegedly defrauding him of money during the hip-hop soap opera Empire’s phenomenal six-season run.
As per ABC7, he further said in the same interview,
“I trusted CAA to look after me, and they looked after themselves.”
Terrence Howard also claimed that his agents, who negotiated the deal with Fox, put their own interests and the show’s producers first by pressuring him to accept below-market pay during the entire series. Due to this, a lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Friday, December 8, 2023.
On the other hand, according to ABC7 and other sources, the case filed in Los Angeles Superior Court claimed,
“Despite this feeling of trust, it would be years later that Howard would discover that CAA … placed their own financial interests, as well as the interests of the production companies they also represented, ahead of his own.”
The same source also claimed that while Terrence Howard was aware that CAA was packaging the project and collecting a fee, he was unaware of the conflicts of interest CAA created by representing the production companies and actors and their own financial interests being incorporated into the project.
However, Hollywood Reporter claimed that James Bryant, Howard’s attorney, disagreed with the packaging fees given by a studio to agencies in exchange for connecting them with a director or actor for a writer’s pitch. He also claimed that in the past few years, agencies have grown significantly in strength and discovered a far more profitable means of generating revenue.
He further added that a person can represent producers, actors, production companies, and their own financial interests by acting as the packaging agent. That’s when the fiduciary obligation starts to fail.
As sources like Hollywood Reported have revealed, Fox’s highest-rated premiere in three years, Empire, had a premiere pilot that drew close to 10 million people. This is why Howard allegedly thought that it was unfair because he was not paid the proper charges.
According to the source mentioned above, as per the lawsuit, Empire became an immediate hit, surpassing the network’s viewing projections and receiving high marks from reviewers across the entertainment business.
Once the news was made public by The Shared Room on their Instagram account, people flooded the comment section with their reactions. Netizens showed their support to Howard for taking the step.
The 54-year-old Terrence Howard requested the amounts in punitive and compensatory damages. On the other hand, the CAA chose not to respond to any questions asked by any media agencies.
