SPOILERS IF YOU DIDN’T WATCH EMPIRES PREMIERE BEWARE
Empire Season 2 opened up with a ton of celebrity cameos. Reverend Al Sharpton, Don Lemon, Andre Leon Talley, Swiss Beatz, and Sean Cross all had their respectable appearances but none of them held a candle to the Chris Rock appearing as Frank Gathers.
Who would’ve thought the dangerous drug dealer Cookie snitched on way back in the day would be played by one of the biggest legends in stand up comedy?
There’s always something unsettling about a well known comedian playing a serious role. You keep waiting for the laugh and the laugh never comes, and it’s as weird as it is mesmerizing to see the same guy who informed you “there’s no sex in the champagne room” order someone killed…even if it is fake.
Gathers was supposed to be a much darker character than we saw on screen Empire tells us. A producer for the show says creator Lee Daniels originally shot the scene where Rock was actually eating the flesh of Cookies cousin as he was talking to them. Fox executives threw the axe down on the cut and it was replaced with steak sadly.
Honestly the most disappointing moment of the episode was when Lucious ordered him killed! I was down for a season of prison rivalry between the head Lyon and his former employer! I’m still holding out hope that Frank somehow survived…although it’s doubtful.
Still, there’s hope we may yet see Rock in the series again. There’s always a chance Rock could’ve shot some flashbacks to be used in later episodes going more in depth to Cookie and Lucious drug hustling days. For now we can only hope as no official word has been said one way or another.
