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Terrence Howard Almost ‘Fired’ From ‘Empire’? Inside The Actor’s Legal Troubles

By Niki Cruz
Published on: 23:50 PST, Aug 3, 2016

If you’ve been following Empire’s Terrence Howard, you know that he’s been outspoken for a number of years about various subjects, which sometimes lands the Empire star in hot water in addition to other legal woes.

In fact, recent papers filed in a Los Angeles court, reveal that the actor was almost fired from his hit show Empire, in which he plays the lead, Lucious Lyon.

According to People magazine, Howard owes a management company a ton of money, to the tune of $250,000, after they were brought in by Howard to save his career once the hit Fox show Empire was looking to get rid of him. Terrence’s former manager from Authentic Talent and Literary insists that he helped Terrence when the Fox show was going to fire him.

That said, there’s no context given in the papers of the reason why Howard needed help. Nowhere in the papers does it state the reason why Fox wanted Terrence Howard gone from the hit series. Despite that, his former management company states in the lawsuit that they, “intervened with the Los Angeles-based executives of Imagine and effectively saved Howard’s job on Empire by convincing those executives not to terminate Howard from the show.”

Additionally, the lawsuit alleges that Howard stopped paying his management company. Terrence Howard was aware that he owed management ten percent of anything he makes, but after March 2016, these payments to the management company stopped. The papers stated that Terrence, “has failed to [pay further post-termination commissions] despite having received millions of dollars from Empire and despite being in a position to receive millions more.”

The management company says they also played an important role in getting Howard the role on the popular show.

This isn’t the only legal woe that Terrence Howard has had to deal with recently. As TMZ reported, Terrence was sued by his ex-wife for allegedly beating her. At the time, Howard’s wife Ghent said that during a 2013 fight in their Costa Rica rental house he grabbed her neck and pushed her against the bathroom wall and strangled her. Ghent claims that Howard threatened to kill her during the fight. Howard said that it was a mutual fight and that Ghent pepper sprayed him at one point during the fight.

The two went on to fight over spousal support. Ghent had received $5,800 a month in spousal support, but his former wife wanted more money due to Howard’s Empire money. The judge decided not to give Ghent more money, but even so, still criticized Howard.

“Terrence is a bully, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be bullied. Terrence has an unrelenting pattern of styling himself as the victim of rampant racism and unfair allegations about him.”

Howard moved on to Mira Pak and married her in 2013, but documents revealed that shortly after announcing their pregnancy in 2015, the couple got secretly divorced in the same year.

If that’s not enough, there were rumors that Terrence Howard and co-star Taraji P. Henson weren’t getting along on set of their hit show. The two starred in Hustle and Flow together and seemed to genuinely like working together, but it was reported that the two were clashing on the set of Empire. At the time, a source via InTouch Weekly said that it was Howard’s arrogance that had the two stars fighting with each other.

“It’s gotten so bad that Taraji can’t be on set for more than 30 seconds without staring daggers at him.”

Considering Howard is still on the show, it seems like the two have solved their “problems” on set.

[Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP]

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