ILENE CHAIKEN: My first official job in Hollywood
was as a full-time reader at CAA.
They put me at a little desk in the back of the office.
And all day long, I read scripts and wrote reports on them.
So I was writing.
At the time when I was hired, they didn't take
women in the training program.
I asked why.
And they said, well, because girls can't carry typewriters.
They didn't know that I could carry a typewriter better
than any boy.
By the time I was graduated from college,
I knew that I wanted to be a writer-director.
I was talking about ridiculous ways in which human beings
behave towards one another and scandalizing people
and relationships and sex.
And that was what I did intuitively then.
And it's what I still like doing.
So you think that Cookie isn't against Lucious.
No.
ILENE CHAIKEN: I became an executive for 10 years.
And I had done quite well.
But I decided I gotta write now, or I never will.
And just whimsically, I pitched this idea that I had for what
ultimately became "The L Word."
I didn't know anything really about television as a writer.
When they ordered "The L Word" to series,
Gary Levin, who's the president of Showtime, looked at me.
And he said, you can run this show.
And I went, yeah, sure.
The bottom line is, that scene doesn't come out of anything
or flow into anything.
Right.
How can we help ourselves to get from here to there?
I like making television that is powerful,
that changes the world in some way.
And "The L Word" became part of a cultural conversation.
I met people who talked to me about how it enabled
them to have a conversation with their parents,
with their families.
And when I finished doing "The L Word,"
I knew that it was unlikely that I'd ever
work on another project that had that kind
of meaning to so many people.
And then along came "Empire."
You different.
OK?
It's only something Mama knows.
But I want you to always remember, I got you.
You hear me?
Come here.
I got you.
I had just made the decision that I was not going
to work on anybody else's show.
I wanted to go back to doing my own work.
But then my agent called and said,
they finished the "Empire" pilot,
and they want to know if you'll go look at it.
And I said no.
And she said, just go look at it.
So I'd watched it.
And before I was out the door, I was calling my agent
and saying, this could change television.
None of this would have existed without me,
not those gold records, not those plaques, not that studio.
Oh, you tell me, Lucious.
Tell me who's DNA is running all through here.
Huh?
ILENE CHAIKEN: As a writer, I do bring
all of the facets of who I am and who
I've been at different times.
I bring them when I'm trying to channel character experience,
when I'm trying to find a new way into telling a story.
Has "Empire" changed me?
"Empire" has made me better.
I'll always be a writer first and foremost.
I'm not sure that I'll always be a showrunner,
but I think I've got a couple of good years left in me.
[music playing]
(SINGING) We bow down at his feet.
The crown is his alone.
I'm looking at my king take back his throne.
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