Sophia Eggleston of Detroit thinks the similarities between herself and Empire's Cookie Lyon are too strong to be a coincidence, so she's suing the show's creators for $300 million, the New York Post reports.
Eggleston claims that she wrote a book about her life as a "drug kingpin" and went to Los Angeles and hand-delivered it to a woman by the name of Rita Miller, who is reportedly a screenwriter.
Eggleston claims in the lawsuit that Miller told her that she would pitch her story to Lee Daniels, one of the co-creators and executive producers of Empire.
So when Eggleston kicked back and watched Empire air in 2015, and saw that its leading character, Cookie Lyon, went to jail (Eggleston also went to jail), placed a hit on someone (Eggleston says she was put in jail for ordering a hit on someone) and has a gay relative (Eggleston claims she also has a gay relative), all of those similarities smelled like theft.
"There is no possibility the similarities are […] mere coincidence," the suit reads. "[The] defendants had access to and a copy of" her book.
In addition to Daniels, the show's writer Danny Strong and the Fox television network are also named as defendants in the lawsuit.
Eggleston even thinks that they stole Cookie Lyon's style from her, since both she and the character wear mink coats.
"The whole city’s been telling me Cookie is basically me. Any jury would rule for me—$300 million is a very small price for taking my whole life and stealing it," Eggleston told the New York Post.
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Diana Ozemebhoya Eromosele is a staff writer at The Root and the founder and executive producer of Lectures to Beats, a Web series that features expert advice with scarily insightful people. Follow Lectures to Beats on Facebook and Twitter.