'Empire's Lee Daniels tells BET Honors crowd who really inspired Cookie

Everyone wants to claim a piece of the Cookie. But at Saturday's taping of the 2016 BET Honors, Empire co-creator Lee Daniels revealed the true inspiration behind the iconic matriarch on Fox's wildly popular drama.

“Everyone says they created Cookie (Lyon),” he joked during his acceptance speech for his contributions to television and film. “No, seriously, I’m being sued by everyone but Cookie came from my grandmother. Her name was Grace H. Daniels."

Daniels went on to describe his late grandmother, who recently had a street in West Philadelphia named after her in honor of her unwavering advocacy for the African-American community. She served as the democratic committeewoman and, later, the chairperson of Philadelphia’s 44th ward before ultimately joining the Democratic State Committee in 1977.

“From 1947 to 1977, she was a politician in Philadelphia,” Daniels went on. “My earliest memories of her were getting people to vote, and she carried a gun. She was a gangsta. She would make black people come out to vote. She would knock on your door and you knew to come out to vote.”

Daniels also shared that his grandmother told him to embrace his identity — in his personal life and in his art.

“When I was five or four, she said, ‘You know, you are a (expletive), but you know what? It’s gon’ be good because you gon’ do some good things. Just learn to tell the truth. People ain’t gon’ like it, but learn to tell the truth.’ So, tonight, I want to dedicate this award to my grandmother who I love from the bottom of my heart, who told me to tell the truth.”