‘Empire’ season 3, episode 9 reaction: Exec on Cookie’s Jamal decision

On the third season of “Empire” Wednesday night (otherwise known as the midseason finale), we had a chance to see a pretty wide array of stuff unfold, with one of the biggest ones being that following many months of addiction, Cookie Lyon decided that the time was right to try to push Jamal into rehab. Her and Lucious Lyon have been at odds for the vast majority of the season, but at the same time they were able to come together in order to do a little bit of what was right for someone who clearly needed it.

So in sneaking about this decision further in a new interview with Variety, show executive producer  Sanaa Hamri had the following to say about how Cookie decided to go about this, and how Jamal is probably going to react to it in the immediate future:

“She did it in the smartest way by including the entire family. This was very much Lucious and Cookie coming together as parents, in order for him to go to rehab. Obviously, Lucious and Cookie are in cahoots, and I think Jamal is able to look at it as a family intervention versus just Cookie. Sure, he’s going to feel betrayed, but I think he will understand that it’s the best for him.”

Hamri also made it clear that we are going to be seeing a good bit of some of Jamal’s struggle in rehab, which is something that should be great for Jussie Smollett to play as an actor, even though we imagine that it is going to be a very difficult struggle for him:

“…We’re going to go through the journey of an artist who is addicted to pain medication, and we’ll see if he’s able to overcome those demons and get through it. That is going to be very much part of Jamal’s story.”

The unfortunate part of this is now that we’re going to be waiting up until March to see a little bit more of the show and what is going to be coming up next.

For some further news and information right now when it comes to “Empire,” just be sure to head over to the link here! (Photo: Fox.)