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NY Post

Woman Who Says She’s the Real-Life Cookie Is Reportedly Lawyering Up Against Fox’s ‘Empire’

Apr 4, 2016  •  Post A Comment

As the new season of Fox’s hit drama series “Empire” gets rolling, a woman who says she is the “real-life Cookie Lyon” is positioning to put the squeeze on the show’s creators.

“Former gangster Sophia Eggleston has hired a lawyer and filed new court papers alleging that the producers of ‘Empire’ lifted the flamboyantly fiery role, played by Taraji P. Henson, from the pages of her 2009 autobiography, ‘The Hidden Hand,'” The New York Post’s Page Six reports.

“According to her attorney, Tom Heed, the onetime Detroit drug kingpin now wants co-creators Lee Daniels and Danny Strong and studio 21st Century Fox to pay her ‘tens of millions of dollars,'” the report notes. “Eggleston had filed papers in May 2015 that she wrote herself, but a new, professionally prepared complaint doubles down on the allegations.”

While the defendants have asked for a dismissal of Eggleston’s case, Heed told the publication: “I certainly feel like she has a very good argument. What she believes is that the character of herself, especially before she went to prison, as it was expressed in the book ‘The Hidden Hand,’ was pretty much cribbed in total and that is now the character Cookie Lyon.”

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