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Empire Breaks Records on Twitter, Casts Following Grows

Fox’s hit “Empire” isn’t just breaking ratings records. It’s making waves on social media, too.

Tweets from last week’s “Empire” finale — which drew in a whopping 17 million viewers overall — were viewed more than 112 million times by about 5.9 million people, according to Nielsen data. Its 2.3 million tweets generated overall makes it the most-tweeted about telecast since Nielsen started measuring.

The cast, which often live-tweets episodes as they air, has benefited over social quite a bit. On March 18, the day of the drama’s finale, alone, Jussie Smollett, who plays Jamal Lyons, jumped from 54k followers to 204k, and his tweets were seen more than 6.5 million times. See below a chart of Smollett’s follower growth, courtesy of Twitter.

In another dramatic follower jump, Trai Byers, who plays Andre Lyon, went from 245 followers to more than 77k throughout the course of the first season. Castmember Grace Gealey went from 368 followers to 67k throughout the season.

However, one of the major “Empire” castmembers was a little late on joining Twitter. Lucious Lyon himself, aka Terrence Howard, didn’t join the social-media platform until this past weekend. He quickly amassed 45k followers.

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Taraji P. Henson, who already had an impressive 2.9 million Twitter followers before the show began, ended the first season with 3.2 million followers, gaining 39k the day of the finale.

For the show’s penultimate episode on March 11, the cast gathered at the Fox offices to live-tweet. Their efforts drew 750,258 tweets — the most tweets for a single hourlong episode (the finale was two hours long).

See below more charts following the Twitter growth of the “Empire” stars.

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