Terrence Howard is suing his former agency, CAA for breach of fiduciary duty. He cites that the agency allegedly asked him to take a lower salary to appear on the hit show Empire.
The complaint was filed in a Los Angeles Superior Court. It states that Howard was not informed on CAA’s packaging fee. According to the court documents, he was paid less than Kevin Spacey and Jon Hamm for their lead roles in House of Cards and Mad Men, respectively. The suit details the belief that Howard should’ve been paid the same or more than they were, given Empire brought in more viewership.
According to Rolling Stone, Howard’s pay started at $125,000. His pay peaked at $325,000 per episode. The complaint also faults CAA for representing Empire co-creators and executive producers Lee Daniels and Danny Strong along with Howard and other actors on the series.
“Not only did it become abundantly clear that his agents led him on a path to rely on information that was misleading, he discovered that this was the result of the fact that CAA was not acting in his best interest, but in the in interest of their own financial benefit as well as the interest of the Production Companies and the producers, Daniels and Strong,” the complaint states. “Under normal circumstances, had CAA not been the packaging agent, and had CAA not been concurrently representing the Production Companies, where their sole financial interest would have been the 10% fee from the compensation received by Howard, they would have most certainly fought for Howard in a manner that most producers are accustomed to seeing CAA agents engage in.”