Much to the dismay of fans, Lee Daniels has announced that Star will not be getting renewed. But it isn’t just as simple as Fox failing to renew the show. He had reportedly been shopping the show around to other networks fighting to get it back on television only to be told no by BET, Amazon and OWN together. Now say what you want about the show, but BET of all networks could have picked it up because anyone who watches that channel knows they have a tendency of playing the same film several times a day in perpetuity for weeks on end. They could stand for something new.
The unfortunate part about this show’s demise is that it isn’t the only project Daniels has had canceled. Star was a melodrama about the lives of rising pop stars in the vein of Empire, patterned after that show’s success. Empire, as we know was the home of Jussie Smollett who recently found himself front and center in the middle of a national political scandal as he was being accused of faking a hate crime maligning the president to malign his character. He had all charges dropped but still seen as a black eye on the face of the show. The show was renewed for another season and the cast all came together in support saying they wanted Smollett on the 6th season. A day or so later, Empire was also canceled. Whether he’ll make it onto the 6th season isn’t clear but if the tea leaves are to be believed, we probably already know the answer to that. Then there’s the Richard Pryor documentary he was working on that never materialized for whatever reason that resulted in a lawsuit from Damon Dash for millions he invested into a black hole that never happened.
So as it stands, it doesn’t appear that Lee Daniels has anything in production these days. This almost comes across as a Color Purple moment because he’s had all of his work pulled after beefing with Monique for several years and so has Steve Harvey who’s had his show pulled and he was pulled off of Little Big Shots when he helped create the show. You might remember the viral debate Harvey had with Monique where he told her it wasn’t about having integrity but it was the money game she needed to play. Some pointed out an old video of him joking about acting like a monkey for a paycheck. In the end, it appears she had the last laugh out of it all, although she’s said on her show that she wasn’t going to take pleasure in someone else’s demise. No word on whether her choice to describe what those two are going through was shade or not.