Lee Daniels speaks on the possibility of working with Jussie Smollett again after his false crime convictions.
During a recent interview, the creator of “Empire,” revealed that he would book Smollett for an upcoming project. “I’d work wit him again. I’d cast him in something. He was a son to me,” he said. “And he also represented the movement that I tried to start, which I didn’t know I was starting. I was so busy, worried about Cookie’s hat and the music that we were playing on Empire. This was before Insecure. And this was before “Black Panther,” we started it.”
Daniels added, “I was so worried about getting everything right that I didn’t know what was happening in the zeitgeist. That whole situation was complicated. I still don’t know what to believe. Honestly, I don’t know what to believe. People say he didn’t do it; he did do it. God bless him on his journey.”
In 2019, Jussie Smollett reported that he was attacked by two men while on his way home from a sandwich shop. He said that men yelled homophobic and racist slurs at him while tying a rope around his neck and pouring bleach on him.
After the attack and a formal investigation, law enforcement claimed that the actor paid the two men $3,500 to stage the hate crime. They also claimed that Smollett put this together because he was unhappy with his salary on “Empire,” which he played the role of Jamal Lyon for five seasons.
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