Ajiona Alexus Brown is an American actress and singer. She began her career starring in the TV One sitcom The Rickey Smiley Show (2012–2014), and later played Teenage Cookie Lyon in the Fox musical drama series, Empire (2016–2019). She starred in the Netflix teen drama series, 13 Reasons Why (2017–2018), the Hulu supernatural thriller, Light as a Feather (2018–2019), and the starz crime drama, BMF (2021). Alexus also starred in films Something Like Summer (2017), Acrimony (2018), and Breaking In (2018).

Loretha "Cookie" Lyon is a fictional character from the American musical drama Empire on Fox. Portrayed by Taraji P. Henson, Cookie is one of the main characters within the series, the queen bee and the wife of former drug dealer turned hip-hop mogul, Lucious Lyon who gets released from prison and strikes out to lay claim to half of their multimillion-dollar record label, which was initially funded by her drug money.