The woman who claims that her life provided the basis for Empire’s Cookie Lyon is filing new legal papers and demanding $300 million in her lawsuit against the creators of the hit show.
Sophie Eggleston has claimed that the character of Cookie Lyon was based on her autobiography, The Hidden Hand, which came out in 2009, and she had hired lawyers in her continuing legal bid against the show’s co-creators Lee Daniels and Danny Strong.
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Her lawyer, Tom Heed, pointed to similarities between her life story and Cookie’s, saying, “I certainly feel like she has a very good argument. What she believes is that the character of herself, especially before she went to prison, as it was expressed in the book ‘The Hidden Hand,’ was pretty much cribbed in total and that is now the character Cookie Lyon.” He also pointed to the fact that Eggleston, like Cookie, had a gay son, as well as the fact that the two women share a taste in flashy clothing.
According to the suit, Eggleston was surprised when Empire began to air and she noticed the similarities. The suit described her as being “stunned and dismayed to see the various similarities of events and characters . . . so numerous and specific, especially . . . Cookie Lyon, that independent creation was obviously impossible.”
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