"Empire" actor Terrence Howard is taking Creative Artists Agency (CAA), his former talent agency, to court over his salary for the hit television show.
According to attorney James Bryant, Howard's former agents provided the actor with misleading information, which led to him being underpaid for his work on Empire.
Bryant said, "When [Howard ] would ask them, 'please provide me with the comparisons so that I know exactly what compensation I should be receiving,' they'd give him comparisons that simply were not accurate were misleading."
Two of those comparisons were Kevin Spacey from House of Cards and Jon Hamm from Mad Men for their fourth season, and Bryant contests "Not only were they making more money than Mr. Howard, the issue is that their shows weren't even doing remotely close to what Empire was doing at the time."
Howard says at the show's height in year six, he was getting $325,000 an episode, and because of the way his deal with CAA was structured, Bryant says the agency had no incentive to renegotiate on his client's behalf.
"CAA simply told Mr. Howard, we're not going to take your 10% agency fee this time because we sort of packaged things together... it was a terrible thing because they had absolutely no incentive to fight for this man," said Bryant.
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Howard said he trusted CAA to look after him, but they only looked after themselves. "Even though I wrote 10-15 songs inside of the thing, I never was given a producer's position even though I redirected...and acted in the capacity of the producer," said Howard.
"I can't say that this was a racial issue, but I cannot imagine that white actors that are comparable to the numbers and the accolades and the world recognition that I have. I can't imagine that CAA would allow them to be misused and treated in the way that they allowed Fox to misuse me or to be paid the way that I was paid," said Howard.
They think the actor was paid 30 to 50% below what he should have been receiving.
Howard says this is about seeking equanimity.
KNX News has reached out to Creative Artists Agency for comment, but have yet to hear back.
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