Empire: Danny Strong On The Pressures Of An Explosive Season Finale

Danny Strong is the co-creator and Executive Producer for FOX’s Empire, one of the few series in recent history to actually grow week-to-week in the ratings. The addictive series has made characters like Cookie and Lucious Lyon, their family, and even supporting characters like Porsha household names.

In anticipation of the season finale, which runs for two hours on Wednesday, March 18, Strong participated in a conference call to promote what’s to come. During that call, we asked Mr. Strong – whose credits include the acclaimed movies Game Change and Lee Daniels’ The Butler, and acting work which has included Buffy the Vampire Slayer – if there is an added pressure to create a season finale as that could be so big as to out-do the twelve episodes that came before.

“I bet some people felt that pressure,” he answered, adding that the team kept re-breaking the story throughout the process. “I didn’t, because I never think that coming up with stories to out-do something is a way that you’re going to come up with a good story. It just needs to come from the characters, and the conflict, and just the fundamentals of what makes a good story, and if you’re trying to out-do something or be explosive of the sake of just out-doing it, I think that’s when things can get hack-y,” he said.

“It was really just a matter of how can we conclude the season that we have set up and have been playing out in a way that was exciting, and powerful, and fun, but then also kept the door open to go into Season 2. And it was tough,” he admitted. “Ilene [Chaiken] and I wrote the final episode together, and, man. We were… there were a lot of rewrites. It was pretty tense.”

“You know who felt the pressure – it was, I think, the network and the studio, because the show had already hit, so they were pounding us with notes, but I have to say that the notes made it better. The notes were really good,” he added.

“Here’s a crazy thing about television: It moves so fast, and by the time we got to the season finale, by the time we got to writing it, we were running out of time, because of everything else in production and writing all of the previous episodes. It was one of the faster-written episodes of the season, but at the end of the day, I think we really pulled it off,” he said.

“I think people are gonna dig it,” he promised.

The Empire season finale airs Wednesday, March 18 starting at 8PM on FOX. Take a look at some preview images from the finale below:

EMPIRE: Cookie (Taraji P. Henson, L) is cooking up a plan of her own in the special two-hour “Die But Once/Who I Am” Season Finale episode of EMPIRE airing Wednesday, March 18 (8:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. CR: Chuck Hodes/FOX

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EMPIRE: Cookie (Taraji P. Henson, L) is cooking up a plan of her own in the special two-hour “Die But Once/Who I Am” Season Finale episode of EMPIRE airing Wednesday, March 18 (8:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. CR: Chuck Hodes/FOX