‘Empire’ season 2, episode 12 reaction: Show boss on latest character deaths
Does “Empire” not have something in common with “The Vampire Diaries,” “The 100,” and “The Walking Dead”? In some ways, yet — all three of them have killed off a supporting lesbian character over the course of the past couple of months.
In some ways, you can argue that logistically, the Fox series getting rid of both Mimi (Marisa Tomei) and Camilla (Naomi Campbell) makes some sense, given that neither one of them are series regulars, and they’re also relatively famous people with salaries that would take up a chunk of the show’s budget if they were around forever. It’s the way that they went that we take issue with, since the whole poisoning felt so completely over-the-top to the point of it being cheesy. It’s great when the show is funny, but not when it comes to death.
So does showrunner Ilene Chaiken see the comparisons between losing these characters and what happened to lesbian characters on some of the other shows? Speaking to Variety, the executive producer (who previously worked on “The L Word”) did her best to make a clear distinction based on Camilla’s opportunistic nature:
“I would say that Camilla is not a lesbian character. Camilla was, if anything, an opportunist, which is quite different from being a lesbian. If anything, the lesbians should wish for a character like Camilla to be killed off since she just preyed on a powerful lesbian in order to fulfill her heterosexual ambitions.”
It is probably a little unfair in the end for “Empire” to be labeled as not LGBTQ-friendly, given that it has an openly gay main character in Jamal, and has people all throughout the writers, crew, and production of a variety of sexual orientations. We think ultimately this was a scheduling move, and one that unfortunately was not executed in a way that everyone will love.
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