Six years after he said he was the victim of a hate crime, actor Jussie Smollett continues to reject the narrative of Chicago officials that everything was a “deception.”
In “The truth about Jussie Smollett?”, A Netflix documentary that debuts on Thursday, Smollett, the former “Empire” star, reviews the legal battle that surrounds the alleged attack, that the police and city officials said they orchestrated against himself.
While the documentary will be published just over three months after Smollett and the city of Chicago reached a civil settlement, Smollett spends much of their interview segments defending themselves and maintaining their innocence.
“At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if someone liked or not,” says Smollett in the documentary, and adds: “The fact is: I did not do that. And that is all that matters.”
Smollett, which is black and gay, first reported a hate crime against him in January 2019, claiming that two men confronted him with racial and homophobic insults, wrapped a rope around his neck and threw him bleach.
However, city officials sued Smollett and accused him of presenting a false police report on January 29, 2019, saying he knew his attackers and planned the attack. The demand of the city sought $ 130,000 in expenses spent in police investigation. Smollett replied, denying that he has orchestrated the attack.
The Olabingo and Abimbola Osundairo brothers, who worked on the “Empire” set and wrote a book entitled “Bigger than Jussie: the disturbing need for modern lynching,” Smollett told them to organize the hate crime and testified against him in his judgment.
In addition to Smollett, the documentary presents interviews with Smollett, former Chicago Police officers, Osundairo Brothers, his lawyer and journalists who covered the case.
“I think he wanted to be the activism poster boy for black people, for homosexuals, for marginalized people,” says Bola “Osundairo about Smollett in the documentary.
“Ola” Osundairo said that when Smollett asked them to “be beaten”, “he thought it was madness.” “But at the same time, I say: ‘It’s Hollywood.’ This is how it goes’,” he says in the documentary.
Smollett was convicted of five criminal charges for a messy conduct of serious crime in December 2021 and sentenced to 150 days in prison and 30 months of probation in March 2022. But the Supreme Court of Illinois revoked the sentence in November 2024.
The State Superior Court ruled that Smollett should never have been accused in the first place after he entered an agreement of lack of presence with the office of the state prosecutor of Cook.
The case of a year captivated the country, with many people speculating about what really happened when Smollett continued to reach the headlines.
In the documentary, Smollett says he was “playing WHOK-A-Mole with rumors, with lies,” throughout the investigation.
But “at a certain point, it’s too much, and you can’t catch them all,” he adds.
The documentary, which is one of the producers of “The Tinder Swindler”, says in his promotional materials that he wants the “audience to decide who is saying” the truth.
Smollett has not commented on the documentary in his social media accounts. He gave a long interview with Variety before his release, in which he touched on the general impact that the case had on him.
“The story of each other person has changed several times. Mine ever,” Smollett told the publication. “I saw firsthand how the stories are built. I saw firsthand the way someone can take exactly the opposite of who you are and literally sell it.”
Smollett is promoting his new R&B album and was recently announced as a contestant at the reality show “Special forces: the toughest test in the world.” The program is transmitted to Fox, the network that canceled “Empire” after the Smollett saga.
