Jussie Smollett speaks out on the fallout he received after his 2019 arrest.
The former “Empire” star was charged with staging a hate crime hoax, claiming he was assaulted by two men. He said that they yelled racial and homophobic slurs at him, poured bleach on him, and put a noose around his neck, as he was walking home from a Subway Sandwich shop.
The initial charges would later be dropped, however, he faced new prosecution in 2020 and was convicted of disorderly conduct in 2021. Smollett was sentenced to five months in jail and was fined. He is currently appealing his case. Despite everything he has going on, he still maintains that he is innocent.
“I was numb,” he said in an interview. “I didn’t know how to connect the dots. I really genuinely did not know. I couldn’t make sense of what was going on, and I couldn’t make sense of what people were actually thinking… what exactly do they think happened? I couldn’t put two and two together.”
He also said that there was no way that people would believe the “stupid rumor” and take it seriously, saying that most of the talking was coming from his “haters.” The 42-year-old actor explained, “They had a mission. I felt very disconnected from that. I still to this day can’t entirely make sense of, ‘What the f*** was that?’ But obviously it was painful. I certainly am not going to sit here and try to act to the world as if I was fine.”
He continued, “We’re still dealing with the repercussions from that narrative. We’re still dealing with that every day. At the same time, it’s not in my mental and it’s not in my soul, it’s not in my spirit. People can say what they want about you, but they have no control. They can do whatever they want, they can even put you behind bars. They can control your physical, but they can’t control my mind. They can’t control my spirit. They can’t control my soul, and they can’t control the knowledge that I have of who I am.”
When it came to his arrest on Feb. 21, 2019, he called it a dark day. “That was a pretty dark dat because that’s when everything clicked to me about what was happening. A lot of things tested my strength, a lot of things tested my mental, but the one thing I never lost– I never started thinking that I am somebody that I’m not. That is the one thing that did not happen. Keep in mind, I was deep in my thirties when this happened. This isn’t like I’m a 16-year-old or a 20-year-old, where this is impacting their very being of who they believe that they are. I never started thinking that I am somebody that I’m not.”