'Empire': Taraji P. Henson, AKA Cookie Lyon, Reveals She Originally Turned Down The Hit Fox Show [VIDEO]

Taraji P. Henson almost missed out on one of the greatest series on Fox right now.

MStars News has learned that Henson — aka Cookie Lyon, wife of Lucious Lyon, played by Terrence Howard — almost missed out on a wonderful opportunity because she said no at first.

According to Access Hollywood, Fox just renewed the show last week for Season 2, and it seems the cast will all be on board, including Howard, for now, unless something changes due to the questions at the television critics's winter conference about his abusive past.

His co-star Henson revealed that the cast received the wonderful news that there will be another season while on a flight to the television critics conference.

"So, we're on the plane and everybody's sleepy because we worked [the night before], had to wake up at the crack of dawn today to get here. And he's actually a producer on Chicago Fire. He knows someone that works on our set and so we're like, 'Hey.' 'Hey.' 'How you doing?' 'Good luck.' 'Congratulations,'" Taraji says, as she continues, "We fly. We land. He's the first to check his emails and everything. He turns the phone around and he's like, 'You guys got picked up for a second season,' so we're like, 'Yay! Did you hear that?' ... The plane is like, 'Yay! We love the show.' And so we all walk off the plane like Rocky."

Empire has only had three episodes released, including Wednesday night, Jan. 21's, and has already reached 10.3 million viewers, according to Access Hollywood. Henson claims the success seems to be because of the music, produced by Timbaland; the characters; and guest appearances, like Naomi Campbell, who was featured in last night's hour of the show, and the drama is what makes this show a much-watch.

"I think the easy thing is it's music, it's fashion, you know, high drama, very much like Dynasty. Soap opera-ish," Taraji says, adding, "I also think it's because it looks different than anything you've ever seen on television. We deal with subject matter that affects everyone."

"There's something for everyone on this show and the subject matter that we deal with, we're not making it pretty, we're making it as real and true to life as possible. I just remember getting the script being very, very afraid that we're going to offend and piss off a lot of people."

When Henson was questioned on how it would offend viewers, the star said:

"Because of the way we deal with the subject matter. It's not pretty. You know, Lucious throws his son in a trash can. That is a graphic scene. ... I was just so afraid. And I was like, Cookie — you can either love her or hate her. She's so bigger than life," Taraji explained. "So when the fear crept in I knew I had to do it, because that's what art is supposed to do — it's supposed to challenge you to think. It's supposed to push buttons inside of you. I don't like safe work, and so this was the perfect opportunity to hopefully make a difference in people's lives every week."

Henson revealed that she said no to the script at first, because she had just took a break from television, but had a change of mind after finally reading the script.

"I wasn't interested 'cause I had just left television," Henson, formerly of Person of Interest, confessed. "And my manager kept saying, 'Please read this script.' Actually, I was doing a play at the time. I was happy on the stage. I was really happy and one day I came home and I read it and I couldn't put it down. I just could not put it down. It was an amazing read, and I was like, 'Oh, my God!'"

Henson goes into a little bit of detail about her character Cookie, revealing that she had to do some things for being released early in prison.

"She has to snitch. ... Well, you know, you don't get out of federal prison early for good behavior," Taraji claims. "I was wondering how many people we're going to catch that — how many viewers were going to catch that after the pilot. And a few did. They were like, 'Wait a minute. She was supposed to do 30 years. How did she get out at 17?' So, some people were kind of waiting to see how she got out. I just loved the social media and watching everyone's response to the show. It's overwhelming."