Taraji P Henson’s success has been the ultimate slow-burn. For 20 years, she gave powerfully moving performances in films such as The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, which earned her an Oscar nomination in 2008 for her supporting role as single mother Queenie. She was an actress you’d recognise, but you probably wouldn’t know her name.
The past couple of years have changed all that, elevating her out of the category of solid B-lister and into genuine stardom, at the age of 48. The shift is down to two equally memorable, but very different, roles: NASA maths prodigy Katherine Johnson in the 2016 Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures, and Cookie Lyon, the feisty ex-con matriarch of the smash hit TV drama Empire.
‘With Hidden Figures, the fact that role came to me was like, “Yes, all my hard work has finally paid off,”’ she says vehemently, from her home in LA. ‘It proved I can play anyone – including an incredible mathematician. But Cookie was the role that made people connect all the dots between the parts I’d played. It was Cookie who made me an international star.’ The right to call herself a star has been hard-won. Taraji first moved to Hollywood aged 26, with just $700 in savings and no contacts in the industry. As a black single mother whose early life in Washington DC was deprived – and whose former boyfriend, the father of her son, was murdered – the perception of her as too ‘edgy’ for the mainstream condemned her to many years of bit parts and low pay on shows including ER and CSI. On Benjamin Button, she calculated that she earned less than 2% of what its leads, Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt, made.
‘It makes you want to pull your hair out,’ she says of the unfairness. ‘If I’d let my ego get out of control, I would have missed the bigger picture, which was me going to the Oscars. I proved that I was worth every penny I asked for. But I had to be patient, because I knew what I had to offer. I knew that I had to continue doing good work. Whatever project I did, I put my heart and soul into it.’ From the start, she saw her background as an asset – in a town full of fakes, it made her authentic. ‘You have to believe in yourself like nothing else,’ she says. ‘I knew exactly who I was. I knew I was bringing something new and fresh to Hollywood. ‘They kept saying, “She’s edgy,” like I was supposed to be ashamed. I thought, “Yeah, that’s right, life’s made me this way – now let me channel those experiences so I can inspire somebody.”’ Being a single mother spurred her on: ‘You’ve got no time to waste – time is ticking, so everything is done with purpose.’
In 2014, she joined Empire as Cookie, the hip-hop impresario whose killer lines, including ‘Tell me why I shouldn’t throw this drink in your bitch ass face,’ have inspired endless memes. ‘She’s not afraid to speak her truth,’ laughs Taraji. ‘There’s an inner Cookie in all of us, but people are afraid to be that raw and honest.’ She has been ‘blown away’ by the international response to the show, which won her a Golden Globe in 2016.
It’s no coincidence that the change in her status has come in the era of #MeToo, when demand has increased for films and TV shows that tell more diverse stories. Hidden Figures was about an episode previously forgotten by history, of the black women whose work was pivotal in early space travel. ‘It’s exciting. We’re seeing a lot more women in leading positions in the industry, and people of different ethnicities,’ she says. ‘There are more opportunities for older women, too. There’s a realisation that people want to see real stories they can identify with.’
She’s an executive producer on her latest film, What Men Want, a comedy that flips the concept behind the 2000 film What Women Want, in which a chauvinist man can suddenly hear women’s thoughts. Taraji plays a sports agent who uses her male colleagues’ thoughts to outsmart them. ‘It’s a message-driven movie, but it’s not heavy,’ she says. ‘It deals with where women are today in terms of equality, but it’s funny, too.’
Producing solves a problem Taraji still encounters: women, particularly women of colour, continue to struggle to be paid what they should be. ‘It’s always a fight,’ she says. ‘I’m a very determined person. If you want the performance I can bring, you’re going to have to pay me what I deserve.’
‘What Men Want’ is released 15 March