Few had it made at the beginning of 2019 quite like Jussie Smollett, an actor and singer who successfully navigated child stardom on the way to becoming a fixture on the hit TV series Empire. That was until late January of that same year, when news broke that Smollett had been attacked outside his downtown Chicago apartment in a possible hate crime. (Smollett is Black and gay.) The breakout details that Smollett shared early on – specifically, that he had been jumped by two Maga foot soldiers who doused him in bleach before placing a noose around his neck – both galvanized public supporters and made them cynical. (Really? They shouted: “This is Maga country?” In Streeterville?) What’s more, the police didn’t do themselves many favors by registering their skepticism early and loudly.
Ultimately, Smollett, who was suspected of staging the confrontation with help from two acting acquaintances, was charged with filing a false police report. When those charges were dropped in a deal with the county prosecutor’s office, prompting cries of favoritism, Smollett was re-indicted, found guilty of framing himself and sentenced to five months of county jail. All the while Smollett was reduced to an object of global derision, with everyone from Dave Chappelle to Charles Barkley getting licks in. Explaining himself only made matters worse.
Even though Smollett would win a conviction reversal on appeal in 2024 and has stuck to his original story, this idea that he manufactured outrage for clout continues to cost him his reputation and career. But is his story truly that far-fetched? “That’s the thing about this case,” says director Gagan Rehill. “It has this gem-like quality where you turn it one way and it looks like one thing, depending on who you ask, depending on their experience, depending on who they are and their position in this case. There’s nothing definitive.”
Rehill’s latest film, Netflix’s The Truth about Jussie Smollett?, feels like the kind of thing that might well wind up on a criminology class syllabus. At the very least you could spend 90 minutes watching this documentary instead of poring over the reams of studies that have been conducted over the decades about the inherently fragile nature of eyewitness testimony. The Truth is an intentional misnomer here; the film doesn’t find the real perpetrators and isn’t liable to leave viewers any more certain of the positions they’ve already staked out on Smollett’s guilt or innocence. All that can be said for certain is: this case, still a head scratcher, is fit for the times. “All you have to do is change a news channel, and you’re given an alternate reality of what’s going on out your window,” Rehill says. “But in this case you legitimately have two competing narratives existing together.”
The film spares no effort in getting down to the bottom of what exactly happened to Smollett. In addition to reviewing the stockpiles of police evidence and trial transcripts, the doc visits with a number of the main players in the case – including Smollett in an exclusive. As he begins sharing his version of events, this time with CCTV and other file footage providing additional context, you gain an appreciation for why the man would abandon the comfort of his luxury high-rise, at 2am, to brave -3C conditions for a Subway sandwich. (He had just arrived from Los Angeles, the fridge was bare, etc) Even his claim to being assaulted by a pair of white men gains credibility from two eyewitnesses (a neighbor and a security guard, both strangers to Smollett) who recalled seeing two people who fit that description lingering outside of Smollett’s building – and testified to as much in court.
Why wasn’t a bigger deal made of this? Well for a start Smollett was tried in Chicago, not Los Angeles or New York. For another, cameras were only allowed for Smollett’s post-trial sentencing – just in time for the world to watch the judge give him a good finger wag. “The trial needed to be reported in a kind of measured, factual way,” Rehill says. Instead, it became an opportunity for overeager pundits to wallow in the void where genetic evidence, crime-scene video and other smoking guns might hang. “I was defending myself against bullshit,” Smollett huffs at one point to camera. The documentary does now what the trial media should’ve done at the time: ask why we should believe the Chicago police. It bears reminding that four years before Smollett fell under suspicion, the city of Chicago came under fire for burying dashcam footage of an unarmed 17-year-old boy whom cops shot 16 times, sparking public outcry and protests.
With help from investigative journalists Abigail Carr and Chelli Stanley, the film drops a few bombshells – not least footage from inside the county jail that appears to show the presumed attackers, Ola and Abel Osundairo, conspiring with police to throw Smollett under the bus. It lends credence to the idea that the fix was not only in, but that it came from on high. (Where else could police get the idea that Smollett hate-crimed himself as leverage for a higher Empire wage than from the mayor who came from the White House with the brother who happened to run one of Hollywood’s largest talent agencies?) Special prosecutor Dan Webb explicitly went out of his way, after Smollett’s conviction was overturned, to tell the public that this new state supreme court “has nothing to do with Mr Smollett’s innocence”. Even now Eddie Johnson, the ex-police chief who directed the investigation at the time, calls Smollett a “narcissistic and troubled young man”.
The public even scoffed with police when Smollett refused to hand over his cellphone for the investigation. In the film, Smollett doesn’t just make the general case for his right to privacy. He reveals his true reason for contracting the Osundairo boys – to score a banned herbal supplement in Nigeria that might help him lose weight. And to think, semaglutides were just four years away from becoming widely available. “Every contributor has their own viewpoint,” Rehill says. “Some may call that an agenda. But these are just larger than life characters who just happen to be saying opposite things. It really makes you think about the nature of truth in society.”
If Smollett can’t be called a perfect victim, the documentary makes clear that the police aren’t perfect villains either. Johnson, a Black Chicago native with roots in the Jim Crow South, took Smollett’s lynching suggestion deeply to heart. Chief detective Melissa Staples, who identifies as gay, was affected by empathy early on as well. Training his camera lens like a loupe, Rehill has a knack for holding focus on one side of his figurative gem long enough for viewers to appreciate the clarity before pivoting it just enough to expose the flaws. Where that leaves his outsized characters in the end is anyone’s guess. Smollett is slowly rebuilding his career, the Osundairo brothers are reveling in rightwing fame and the principal authorities have moved on – and yet so many of us are still stuck on this case.
“I wanted to leave the viewer in the end, like, not sure,” says Rehill, “because I can see how one would not be sure. I understand why people would look into this case further. We live in a society where our trust in established institutions has eroded. So if people are going to go out and look at this again, why not put everything out there?”
The Truth About Jussie Smollett? is available on Netflix on 22 August
