Jussie Smollett on Hate Crime, Netflix Documentary and Hollywood Comeback

For Jussie Smollett, there are clear-cut perpetrators in the story of the 2019 case that sent his once-ascendant career into a death spiral.

“The villains are the two people who assaulted me, the Chicago Police Department and, if I may be so brave, the mayor,” he says. He’s referencing Rahm Emanuel, who held the city’s top job from 2011 to 2019 and is the brother of Hollywood power broker Ari Emanuel.

Smollett is making forays into rebooting his career as an actor, a director and a recording artist. But to do so, he needs to clear up this case, or at least attempt to: We’re speaking just after news broke of a new documentary, “The Truth About Jussie Smollett?,” which will stream on Netflix on Aug. 22 and features an interview with Smollett. The former “Empire” star says that the Chicago establishment conspired to frame him: He claims he experienced a hate crime, one that the world came to believe he faked. Why would the Chicago P.D. and Emanuel do this? He answers the question with two questions.

“Could it be that they had just found out about the missing minutes and the missing tape from the murder of Laquan McDonald? Could it be that the mayor helped hide that?” Smollett asks, referencing the case of a Chicago cop killing a Black teenager that prompted a federal judge to require the CPD to undertake dozens of reforms just two days after Smollett reported being attacked. “We’re living in a world where the higher-ups, their main mission, in order to do all of the underhanded things that they’re doing, is to distract us with the shiny object.” (Rahm Emanuel declined comment.)

Smollett’s career came to a halt after two Nigerian American brothers began cooperating with authorities, claiming that they carried out the attack at Smollett’s behest. Though the charges against him were initially dropped, they were refiled a year later, resulting in a conviction in 2021 on five counts of felony disorderly conduct. Three years later, the Illinois Supreme Court reversed the decision on a technicality. But by then, Smollett’s reputation was in tatters.

Now, Smollett is getting worked up as he holds fast to his original story that two MAGA supporters wearing masks shouted racist and homophobic slurs at him before putting a noose around his neck and splashing him with bleach on a frigid night. He is speaking via Zoom from London; it’s a follow-up to a lengthy sit-down in Los Angeles. My first meeting with Smollett had ended on a cliff-hanger, as he was working up to discuss his innocence. Now he’s finally ready. He won’t directly criticize the brothers, who wrote the book “Bigger Than Jussie: The Disturbing Need for a Modern-Day Lynching” and have popped up on Fox News. But he also maintains that they weren’t the attackers, as they testified under oath.

“All I can say is, God bless you, and I hope it was worth it,” he says. “Every single other person’s story has changed multiple times. Mine has never. I have nothing to gain from this.”

Back in July, Smollett rises from a swivel chair in a windowless recording studio, lit only by peach-scented candles. Wearing a black baseball hat, a hoodie, sweatpants and Nikes, the 43-year-old actor-singer is putting the finishing touches on his second album, “Break Out,” a throwback to the sweaty, sexy grooves of the early ’90s made popular by the New Edition diaspora.

“We’re a sober studio, so you want water or anything like that?” asks Smollett as he pulls off his eyeglasses to wipe away the moisture. (The actor went to rehab in 2023.)

Tinkering away on a soundboard is music producer David Ott. “What are we feeling?” the producer asks as the lyrics float by: “If we do this right, we get to dance in the light. We get to live like we living it up, yeah. Seems like we getting it tonight.” The two men are longtime friends (Smollett is godfather to Ott’s son) and collaborators, including on “Empire,” on which Smollett’s hip-hop scion Jamal Lyon sang, as well as Smollett’s 2018 debut album, “Sum of My Music.”

After six years in exile, Smollett recently signed a deal with Rowdy Records. His lead single, also called “Break Out,” dropped on Aug. 12, with the full album launching in late September. He’s back in the fold at Fox — the very network that unceremoniously bounced him amid his legal troubles — as a cast member of the new season of reality endurance show “Special Forces,” which begins airing on Sept. 25. Eight days before this interview, the tearjerker family drama “The Lost Holliday,” which he directed, co-wrote, produced and starred in, hit streaming platform Tubi and racked up 800,000 views in its first 72 hours, according to Smollett. (The film also stars “Empire” alum Vivica A. Fox and Smollett’s real-life fiancé, Jabari Redd.)

These achievements might seem modest for the breakout of what was once the biggest show on TV, earning $100,000 per episode. As a star in rebuilding mode, he will soon have to subject himself to more interviews, with one topic inevitably coming up. The attack arrived just as Hollywood, in the midst of Donald Trump’s first term, was poised for a racial reckoning. Those who disbelieve Smollett’s story see him as having exploited a fraught political moment for his own gain. High-profile politicians who initially supported him began to distance themselves — like then-California Sen. Kamala Harris, who tweeted: “I’ve seen the reports about Jussie Smollett, and I’m sad, frustrated, and disappointed.”

He didn’t return for the sixth and final season of “Empire,” and his agents at UTA eventually dropped him.

Today, doing press is a process Smollett doesn’t enjoy, even if the judge who oversaw his trial once excoriated him as someone who “craved the attention.”

“Every time I have to go do something now, I tell myself, ‘Time to be Whitney Houston,’” he says. “It’s like a role that you’re playing when you go out there, where it’s who you are, but it’s not really who you are.”

So who really is Jussie Smollett? Even after spending time with him, it’s hard to know. While the story of what happened in 2019 remains out of reach here in the recording studio, he’s quick with a personal disclosure: He tells me all about his fiancé, Redd, whom he met in 2015. They’re getting married next June; Smollett dreamed of having the ceremony at the von Trapp mansion in Salzburg, a nod to his favorite movie, “The Sound of Music,” but “we’re not Bezos.” Next up, he wants “a kid — or three.”

He’s upbeat and endlessly curious, zipping from a spiritual pilgrimage he recently made to Ghana to deep-cut film history. (“Bette Davis in ‘Jezebel.’ Legendary.”) But he dances around the Chicago baggage on this night. The Netflix documentary, with its tease that Smollett might be innocent, also doesn’t seem sure (thus the question mark in the title). Smollett participated in the 90-minute feature from the producers of “The Tinder Swindler” more than a year ago, but he hasn’t seen the finished product. Still, if exculpatory evidence exists, why didn’t it emerge sooner?

“To be honest with you, I don’t really know,” he says from London. “I’m not an investigative reporter or a detective. I can’t sit and tell you exactly, beat by beat, what happened. I can only tell you what did not happen. And what did not happen is the story that’s been out there for almost seven years, that somehow I would have even a reason to do something as egregious as this.”

It’s hard to get further clarity without being able to speak to others in his orbit. Smollett’s family has never wavered in its loyalty to him: Smollett’s sister Jurnee, star of the Apple TV+ series “Smoke,” initially expressed interest in being interviewed for this story, but that fell through after her publicist asked for potential conversation topics. (Naturally, the attack was one.) Jurnee is among the few people who understand Jussie’s origin story. Born in the Bay Area to a Black mother and a Jewish father, Smollett and his five siblings were conditioned for the performing arts, just like the von Trapps. “Our mom enjoyed pretending she was Fraulein Maria, marching through the streets, dancing and singing,” he says. “Psychotic.”

Jussie was the breakout of the family, and at age 8, he signed with agent Barbara Cameron — Kirk Cameron’s mother — and landed a role in Disney’s “The Mighty Ducks,” hitting the ice alongside future “Dawson’s Creek” star Joshua Jackson. The Minneapolis set offered him a close-up vantage of other momagers. Suddenly, his situation wasn’t so unique. “The mothers?

They could easily write a movie about the behind the scenes that would make ‘Best in Show’ look like crap,” he says. “But we had such an amazing time filming that.” Then, the Smollett sextet made history at ABC with the series “On Our Own.” “To this day, we are the only Black family that had all of the siblings in a scripted show. The Culkins cannot say that. The Phoenixes cannot say that. The Lawrences can say that, but they ain’t Black,” he says with a laugh.

When asked about his father, Smollett becomes subdued. The patriarch died at the age of 58 of cancer in 2015 on the same day that “Empire” first aired. Smollett was attending the premiere party when he sensed that his father’s health had taken a turn and rushed to his bedside in Burbank. “I’m so glad that I saw him literally 40 minutes before he passed away.”

The series became an instant phenomenon, leaving Smollett to process the ultimate low and high simultaneously.

“I still have the text message that Taraji [P. Henson] sent me: ‘Baby, Terrence [Howard]’s mom, my dad, and your dad are up there making things happen because we beat everybody.’ That was the text. And I was just like, ‘Who cares?’ But I also did care,” he says. “The first time I ever saw anybody say anything bad about me was three days later. I remember seeing a comment that said, ‘He’s in the illuminati. He traded his father’s life for success.’” Smollett was shocked, and resentful; his attitude toward his career shifted. “I was disconnected from the fame part of it.”

Four years after the illuminati comment, Smollett was once again under scrutiny, but far more magnified, as Chicago police pivoted from investigating a hate crime against Smollett to arresting the actor himself.

“I saw firsthand how narratives are built. I saw firsthand the way that someone can take the exact opposite of who you are and literally sell it,” he says of his vilification. “And people will be like, ‘I believe it!’ God rest his soul, but homeboy Michael Jackson tried to warn us.”

(Jackson faced multiple sexual abuse accusations and police investigations in his lifetime and even after his death in the documentary “Leaving Neverland.” Smollett seems to suggest this was also a conspiracy.)

At the end of our first meeting, we settle on Aug. 4 for our follow-up. (“Obama’s birthday!” Smollett notes excitedly.) It’s then that we’ll delve into what really happened in 2019. He admits, as we part ways, that he cares about how he’s perceived: “I’m still insecure when I meet people for the first time. I don’t know if they are coming into the room thinking that I’m this trash person who did something that I didn’t do, or if they are thinking that I am this good person who got a raw deal. Or if they’re not thinking anything and they’re just coming in,” he says as he pauses on those options, “I would rather the latter.”

Some of his “Empire” colleagues remained supportive, namely Henson, who even invested in Smollett’s feature directorial debut, the ’90s-set drama “B-Boy Blues,” based on a novel by James Earl Hardy. He also remains in touch with Howard. Perhaps that’s why Smollett is loath to throw shade at his one-time co-star, who recently raised eyebrows when he told Bill Maher that he turned down a Marvin Gaye biopic because he didn’t want to kiss another man.

“We all have those family members who say things where you’re just like, ‘Just shut up,’” Smollett says. “I don’t like the way that he said it, but I understand what he was saying. There are roles that I could not commit to. And if he does believe that? Then I respect the man for being honest.”

Accepting life’s complications is a challenge; Smollett knows that as well as anyone. He tells me a story: “My paternal grandfather worked as an animator for Disney. This is the story we’ve been told. I don’t know how true it is. He quit during ‘Dumbo’ because he didn’t like how the birds were portrayed as Black people,” he says. (The crows who encourage Dumbo to fly — one of them named Jim Crow — have been criticized as racist stereotypes.) “I grew up watching ‘Dumbo.’ I didn’t grow up thinking of them as Black. I grew up thinking of them as like bebop, like jazz. Looking back, I’m like, ‘Damn, that was fucked up.’ But it is what it is.”