Earlier tonight, Season 2 of Empire premiered on Fox, but the realest of the real drama this week actually happened over at The Tonight Show, where Jimmy Fallon unleashed a pitch-perfect Empire parody on the world. Check it out, bitch.
There are so many things to enjoy about this video, although most of them come from actually being a huge fan of Empire in the first place. First of all, Jimmy Fallon is obviously good at impressions, having starred on Saturday Night Live for those years, but his Terrence Howard/Lucious Lyon impersonation is so spot-on at times, it made me wonder if Howard himself didn’t do some voicework specifically for the sketch. I’m still not convinced he didn’t.
Second, I don’t think it gets any better than seeing Tonight Show announcer Steve Higgins decked out to the nines as who else but Cookie Lyon. And it’s not just the look, but the constant way he calls everyone (mostly Jimmy) a bitch, that makes it so incredible. But yeah, it’s mostly the look. Fur for days!
Rarely do we get to see two different Cookie Lyon-looking people on TV at the same time, but it happened here, as Taraji P. Henson showed up to not just sass this skit up, but also to beat the dogshit out of Higgins. Only Cookie proper is allowed to call people bitch that often without paying a physical price for it. Even though Anika did get in a few decent licks when they fought in Season 1.
And of course there was the point when we got to see Fallon and Howard on the screen at the same time, wearing basically the same get-up. Would anybody throw tomatoes at me if I dubbed that moment “Two-cious Lyon?” Stop putting horseshoes in those tomatoes!
You’ll have a hard time seeing me complain about Questlove doing anything more than just playing music, and it was great to see him show off more of his comedic chops hair. Wait…did I just say hair instead of here? I’m fro sorry about that. Wait, did I just say fro instead of so?
Of course Donald Trump ended up being the punchline of this sketch, as the man has been the punchline of a lot of things recently. In any case, you can catch The Tonight Show every weekday night, and keep watching Empire every Wednesday night on Fox.
