Shakespeare can turn up almost anywhere.

How long have you been planning to kick my dad off the throne?

Since the day he banished me.

I can die a thousand times.

Just please, they're my baby.

From here on now, this is about to be the biggest and baddest company of hip-hop culture.

Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for the new era of Hakeem Lion Y'all.

From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.

I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folgers director.

This podcast is called The World in Empire.

That clip you heard a second ago was from the Fox TV series, Empire.

The story of an aging ruler, in this case the head of a hip-hop

music dynasty, who sets his three children against each other. Sound familiar? As you'll hear

from its very beginning, Empire has fashioned itself on the plot of King Lear. And that's not the only Shakespeare connection to the program.

To explain all this, we brought in Empire's showrunner, the woman who makes everything happen on time and on budget,

Eileen Chakin. She was interviewed by Barbara Bogave.

Well, Empire seems as if its elevator pitch was a hip-hop king

lear. Was that the idea from the start? Yes, as I understand it. Now, I didn't create Empire.

Right, because you're the showrunner. First, there's a pilot, and then the series gets picked up,

and then they pick the showrunner. It was created by Lee Daniels and Danny Strong, and as I

understand it, that was the idea.

Danny Strong wanted to write about hip-hop. He went to Lee. And his idea was, let's do King Lear in hip-hop.

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