According to reports, the flashback scene in the Jan. 7 debut of “Empire” on Fox, in which Lucious Lyon, played by Terrence Howard, beats his 6-year-old son Jamal and dumps him in a trash can for wearing his mother’s heels was based on the show director Lee Daniels’ rough relationship with his own father. In an interview with Larry King, Daniels said that his police officer father beat him and dumped him in a garbage bin after he wore his mom’s shoes and hobbled into the room where his dad was playing cards with his cop buddies. Lee told King that his dad’s actions didn’t bother him and dressed up in his mother’s clothes again the next week.
Although Tyrese and Sanaa Lathan keep claiming they are not dating and are just friends, the coosome twosome were recently sighted grabbing breakfast at the hip Gowings Bar and Grill in Sydney, Australia. This past October, Lathan denied to reporters that she and Tyrese were a couple after cameras caught them at Pizzeria Mozza in Hollywood, then again a few nights later leaving the Cheesecake Factory in Topanga, Calif. Yours truly actually ran into them about four years ago at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, so this good friendship has been going on for a while.
NBA star Chris Paul held his sixth annual PBA Celebrity Bowling Tournament recently at the AMF Bowl-O-Drome Bowling Alley in Torrance, Calif. Buddies of his, including Nick Cannon, Terrell Owens, French Montana and Jessie Williams, showed up to help raise funds for Paul’s CP3 Foundation. The fun event will be shown on ESPN Sunday, Feb. 1 at 4:40 p.m. before the Super Bowl.
People magazine reports that John Legend, who won a Golden Globe Jan. 11, was feted with a star-studded birthday party for 40 people at Catch NYC, thrown by his wife, Chrissy Teigen. The couple first celebrated the crooner’s 36th birthday, which was actually Dec. 28 in Las Vegas. A-listers on hand for the festive occasion included his good friend Kanye West and Kim Kardashian West, Robert De Niro and Grace Hightower, Padma Lakshmi, Katie Couric and John Molner and Michael Strahan. The guests and birthday boy enjoyed a five-course private dinner prepared by the Big Apple Meatpacking District hot spot’s executive chef, Hung Huynh.
The Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel will be the home for the Rainbow PUSH Coalition and Citizenship Education Fund’s 18th annual Wall Street Project Economic Summit Jan. 13-15. This year’s summit, “Where Wall Street, Main Street & Silicon Valley Converge,” will evaluate minority participation in the technology industry, increased entrepreneurship, investing in urban communities, identifying the best companies for diversity and the role, or lack of, African-Americans on corporate boards.
“The Black middle class has grown exponentially. However, there is still room for tremendous growth,” says the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition and organizer of the Wall Street Project.