Cookie Lyon on Empire
This is a classic expression. The pilot acted a little more undecided on just how many shades of gray Cookie would have; I think the show very quickly figured out that she is the star of this whole enterprise, and the future episodes are WAY more unambiguous about it: Cookie is right, Cookie is smart, you want to be on Team Cookie. They aren't smarmy about it, and neither is she (ahem, Rayna Jaymes), but the lines are drawn as sharply as that lipstick.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
Cookie was in jail for 17 years on drug charges, and is released in the pilot. If I ever go to prison, this is exactly what I am going to have on tap for when I get back into the free world.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
Those are some tight pants. The thing is, if the show's timeline is current, she went to jail in 1998. I REALLY wish they'd spent some time, as bonus comic relief, on how f'ing confusing it must be when you got locked away during the end of grunge and then came out and it's... whatever the hell the 2010s have wrought. Cookie seems to fit in seamlessly, but wouldn't she have stocked up on a bunch of INSANE THINGS and then been like, "Shit.. Nobody TOLD me"?
Cookie Lyon on Empire
Those earrings are intense. I believe Jess remarked of these that you could believably use them as picture frames for a wallet-size school picture, which I genuinely wish she had done.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
Cookie wore this to crash an Empire board meeting. AS YOU DO. Joan Collins should be on THIS show instead of mucking around on E! as some fictional Grand Duchess of Oxford (nice try).
Real quote: “Don’t forget to thank your Cookie on this historic occasion."
Cookie Lyon on Empire
She LOVES a jungle print.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
She has a clothing budget because she basically "gets what's mine," a.k.a., a hefty salary and initially perfunctory job from Lucious in exchange for her not throwing his IPO off track, telling anyone the company was founded on drug money (how did they not FIGURE THAT OUT after she went to jail, though?!?), and/or otherwise making a power grab against him. So that's how she afforded her matching animal ensemble.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
This outfit is lively, but mostly noteworthy because about fifteen seconds after this exchange, she hurled one of those shoes at him and missed badly. It was good. I WILL also add that Cookie is singlehandedly trying to make sure we all wear spandex again.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
However my personal favorite is this one, because it MATCHES HER iPAD CASE. Cookie has also seamlessly accepted all new technology, by the way. She is fazed by nothing. Maybe they had Netflix streaming in prison.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
Taraji P. Henson was so, so right to get herself off "Person of Interest." I MEAN. Every single person on "Empire" is a thousand times more of-interest than anything on there.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
Cookie does not mess around with funeral lids (here, her cousin has been killed, though she doesn't know it was Lucious who did it). However, the real hat winner here is her sister, played by Tasha Smith. I fondly remember Tasha from the acting teach in ANTM season two, wherein Shandi wept so hard she leaked out a long string of mucus that she -- in defiance of gravity itself -- then managed to snort back up her nose in its entirety. Good times, good memories.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
In this delicious moment, Cookie has shown up in her finest for a family dinner, after finding out that Lucious's new girlfriend has been spying on her. She concludes saying grace thusly: “Do not withhold your blessings, even from hos that hire skanks to spy on me. In Jesus’s name, I pray. Amen.” If she started a church I would probably go.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
Cookie would, I think, rather die than wear a plain patent nude pump.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
On shows like this, I like to imagine the Twitter feed -- or blog, if we're old-school -- of the anonymous employee who just keeps track of what Cookie wears every day to the office. It would be called The Cookie Jar, if it were a blog. I used to enjoy imagining this of some random SD-6 intern every time Sydney came back from yet another exciting mission with yet another wig, while everyone else just sat around and typed and only got a gift card to Target from Sloane at Christmas.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
This was entertainingly wrong: Cookie wanted to convince an incarcerated rapper to switch record companies, to save Empire or somesuch (it's always to save Empire), and so she dons a head-covering to try and convince his Nation of Islam mother that she too is devout. It's hilariously half-assed, in a way that is deliciously in character, but it did actually work. If I have a complaint about Empire, it's that sometimes these things are presented as massively important to the company and then we never hear about them again. As with this one.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
I just thought you'd like to know that Cookie's festish for leopard print extends to her wall coverings.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
We also get a clothing montage in one episode, because she thinks Lucious is hitting on her and so she can't decide what to wear to a big family dinner. Clearly option no. 1 involved her favorite print.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
I would have gone with option No. 2. Cookie's tastes have -- by and large -- gotten refined pretty fast. The Cookie who sauntered out of jail in that fur would NEVER have bought anything as sedate as this.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
Nor this. It's so Starlet (albeit actually legitimately good). Cookie just flat-out does not own that shirt. She would CLEAV IT OUT. It would be a bustier. Don't buy it.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
Of course, she ended up wearing this under her coat, then ripping it open to taunt Lucious when she finds out he's actually engaged to his g.f. Anika. "Oh, and Anika," she then says, turning around and lifting the coat in the back to flash her rump. "THIS is an ass." Best parting shot ever. The look of amused horror on her kids' faces was fantastic.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
Do not mistake this for a maxi dress. IT'S A CATSUIT. With flared legs. She is... a gift.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
And then sometimes she has a randomly great coat. I don't know if there's a mandate to slowly tone her down, or what, but if so then it is a MISTAKE. As much as I like coat porn.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
The Cookie Jar blogger is so disappointed that Business Cookie showed up today. That thing is like a Trefoil, the Girl Scout Cookie nobody wants because it's so boring compared to the mighty Tagalong. BE A TAGALONG, COOKIE.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
This at least feels rather more like the Macy's cougar department.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
Is it weird that I kind of like this sweater?
Cookie Lyon on Empire
Even this is like the TASTEFUL way to wear your burgundy fur vest. And if Burgundy Fur Vest is the route you're taking, please don't try and find a sedate way to do it. Embrace it.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
How come PETA hasn't thrown anything at Cookie yet?
Cookie Lyon on Empire
And OBVIOUSLY under that full-coverage mink was a white jumpsuit with a maximum of cleavage and a minimum of support. It's shocking to me that it took Cookie as long as it did for her to visit the sausage factory after getting out of prison. There is no way about ten different people at this party weren't in full agreement with Cookie about the caliber of her nether regions.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
In the later episodes, Cookie seems to have embraced other patterns with increasing fervor. This is some kind of sweater-y dress paired with the discount version of the Bulgari snake necklace that you see on Naomi Watts (and actually a few other people) all the time. You'll be pleased to know that moments after this screen grab, Cookie got some action from Lucious's adorable security guard (Derek Luke), whom she had propositioned once while drink by backing into her car, throwing her legs in the air, and shouting at him to taste her cookies. He does indeed end up sampling them and he appears to find them extremely nourishing.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
Sleeping with a man OTHER than Lucious -- her first, and whom she slept with again a few times on the show -- has opened her up like a blossom, I guess?
Cookie Lyon on Empire
And then WHAT IS THAT. The woman who wears that dress gives self-actualization seminars at the Learning Annex and makes her own perfumes.
Cookie Lyon on Empire
It's just so WEIRD on her body. WHY. DON'T CRUMBLE THE COOKIE, "EMPIRE." DON'T YOU DARE.