September 14, 2025
by Carla Hay
“The Truth About Jussie Smollett?”
Directed by Gagan Rehill
Culture Representation: The documentary film “The Truth About Jussie Smollett?” features a racially diverse group of people (black and white, with one Latina) who discuss the case of American actor/singer Jussie Smollett, who claimed he was the victim of a hate crime assault in Chicago in January 2019.
Culture Clash: In 2021, Smollett was convicted of five felony counts of disorderly conduct for staging a hate crime and lying to Chicago police in this controversial case, but the conviction was reversed on a technicality in 2024.
Culture Audience: “The Truth About Jussie Smollett?” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in celebrity scandals and true crime stories about hoaxes and frauds, but this irresponsible documentary is less about investigative journalism and more about pushing questionable theories for the sake of sensationalism.
The question mark in the title “The Truth About Jussie Smollett?” says it all about how even the filmmakers have doubts about what they’ve presented in this movie. This time-wasting and tabloid documentary downplays proven facts in order to throw in irrelevant theories from people with questionable statements. Convicted felon Jussie Smollett pathetically tries salvage his tattered reputation for being a hoaxer.
Directed by Gagan Rehill, “The Truth About Jussie Smollett?” does not offer any new and credible evidence that is convincing to either side of this controversial criminal case. The scandal started in January 2019, when Smollett claimed to be a victim of a racist and homophobic assault in Chicago. Smollett described the attackers as two unidentified white men whom he says he doesn’t know.
All of the most credible facts of the case have already been presented in the legal system and dissected and over-exposed in the media. Smollett has maintained that he is not guilty of the crimes he went to trial for (disorderly conduct for staging a hate crime and lying to Chicago police), but the documentary filmmakers don’t give him a thorough interrogation in his sit-down interview that he did for this documentary. Instead, Smollett just rambles self-pitying comments and avoids talking about the most damaging facts that make him look dishonest.
Who is Jussie Smollett? He was born in Santa Rosa, California, on June 21, 1982. His father Joel Smollett is a Caucasian Jew, but Joel reportedly has said that he doesn’t want to identify himself as white. His mother Janet Smollett is African American and Irish. Although Jussie is mixed-race/multi-racial, he identifies as black. Jussie is also openly gay. Both of his parents have been involved in progressive politics and civil rights activism.
Joel and Janet had five sons and two daughters. Joel was mostly absent from his children’s life. Jussie and his other siblings are entertainers who started in showbiz as children. His most famous sibling is actress Jurnee Smollett. During the height of Jussie’s popularity, he had an image of being a social justice warrior who fought for gay rights and the rights for other historically oppressed people.
At the time of the alleged hate crime attack, Jussie was co-starring on the TV drama series “Empire,” which was filmed in Chicago, even though the show was about a New York City-based family dynasty in the music industry. “Empire” was on the air from 2015 to 2020. At the time of the alleged hate crime attack, Jussie was in contract negotiations to get a salary raise on “Empire.” Jussie has denied speculation that he concocted this hoax as a ploy to get public sympathy and a salary increase.
The basic facts of the case are rehashed in the documentary. At about 2:30 a.m. on January 29, 2019, Frank Gatson (who was Jussie’s creative director at the time) called 911 to report that Jussie was the victim of a racist and homophobic hate crime attack. Jussie was living in a Chicago apartment at the time because of his work on “Empire.” Gatson is not interviewed in the documentary and was never named as a suspect in this case.
According to the 911 phone call and Jussie’s later statements, Jussie says he was attacked while walking to his apartment at around 2 a.m. on January 29, 2019, on East Lower North Water Street in Chicago’s Streeterville neighborhood. Jussie says he was on the phone with Gatson at the time of the attack. Gatson confirmed to investigators that he received this phone call, but there has been no proof of the specific location of where Jussie was at the time the phone call was made. Cell phone records can only point to the nearest cell phone tower at the time a call was made.
At the time, Chicago had been having an unusually cold winter. According to weather reports, Chicago’s temperature was -17°F (-27.2°C) at approximately 2 a.m. on January 29, 2019. The wind chill at the same time was -50°F (-45.6°C). It’s important to keep these weather conditions in mind when looking at the facts of the case. It was the type of bitterly cold night where it wouldn’t be unusual for people outside to be wearing ski masks or other face protections in these freezing temperatures.
One fact that hasn’t be disputed (and was also proven through video surveillance footage) is that Jussie had purchased a sandwich at a nearby Subway shop shortly before walking back to his apartment. Although some people have wondered why a celebrity would go to a sandwich shop at 2 a.m. on an extremely cold night, this visit to the Subway shop doesn’t prove the attack did or didn’t happen. All it proves is Jussie was at a Subway shop shortly before walking back to his apartment.
Jussie’s hate crime story (which is recreated by actors in the documentary) is that he was walking on East Lower North Water Street when he was ambushed from behind by two white men wearing ski masks that covered their faces, except for the areas around their eyes. Jussie says that the two men jumped on him, beat him up, threw an unknown chemical on him, and put a noosed rope around his neck while also shouting racist and homophobic slurs. Jussie said both of the men knew who Jussie was because they mentioned the show “Empire” when calling him a homophobic word. (Jussie’s Jamal Lyon character on “Empire” was also openly gay.)
Jussie says the men also told him, “This is MAGA country,” in reference to Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. According to Jussie, these supposed attackers must have been Trump supporters. Although there is video surveillance footage of the exact place on the street during the time that Jussie says the attack happened, there has never been any video surveillance footage of Jussie being attacked on the street.
All the evidence in the case points to Jussie fabricating the story. The documentary includes the video surveillance footage showing that after this supposed assault, Jussie was seen calmly walking into his apartment building lobby with a noosed rope around his neck and while holding a plastic Subway bag that had the sandwich he bought earlier. Jussie also walked past the building’s security personnel without communicating with the security personnel.
He didn’t call for medical help. And by his own admission, Jussie didn’t want to report the assault to police. Jussie also later admitted that he removed the rope from his neck before he went back to the apartment building and put the rope back around his neck when he knew the police were coming to interview him. The documentary has the police body cam footage showing that Jussie had the rope around his neck when police arrived, but he removed the rope from his neck again after the interview began and handed it over as evidence.
The documentary leaves out the fact that Jussie, by his own admission, initially didn’t want to get police involved. His defenders have said it’s because Jussie was afraid that the Chicago Police Department would be too racist to investigate the case correctly. A few days before Jussie said he was attacked by homophobic racists, he says he received homophobic and racist hate mail that had words from cut out from magazines and glued to the paper that was used to send the hate mail. Whoever was responsible for sending this hate mail has never been identified.
There’s no official “right” or “wrong” way to react to being brutally assaulted. But not calling for medical help after supposedly being doused with an unknown chemical and getting beaten up, calmly walking into an apartment building a few minutes after the supposed attack, not alerting the building’s security about being assaulted by attackers who could be stalkers, being dishonest about the placement of a noosed rope that was supposedly used in the assault, and refusing to report this supposed attack to police are not the ways most people would react after getting this type of assault, if it happened the way Jussie described it. Although Jussie had some cuts and bruises on his face, there was never any medical evidence that he was doused with a chemical at the time that he said it happened. After the police investigation began, he eventually went to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, he was treated at the hospital for minor injuries, and was released in “good condition” later that morning.
A police investigation revealed video surveillance footage showing two men walking together on the street in the vicinity of the supposed attack during the period of time that Jussie says he was assaulted. The racial identities of the men couldn’t clearly be identified in the surveillance video. However, when police showed Jussie the video footage, he identified the men as the ones who most likely attacked him because their body sizes and clothes matched his description of his attackers.
The hoax was exposed in February 2019, when two Nigerian immigrant brothers—Olabinjo “Ola” Osundairo and Bola “Abel” Osundairo—confessed to police that Jussie paid them $3,500 to stage the attack by roughing him up somewhere that wasn’t on the street and wasn’t on camera. The Osundairo brothers met Jussie because they did some work on “Empire” as extras and because they also worked with Jussie for physical fitness training. Jussie claims that the $3,500 check payment to the Osundairo brothers was for herbal supplements that the Osundairo brothers were supposedly going to get in Nigeria. There’s been no proof that the Osundairo brothers actually got these so-called herbal supplements.
The Osundairo brothers also admitted they were the two men whom Jussie identified in the surveillance video. The Osundairo brothers owned the same clothes and shoes worn by the two men in the video. The investigation also uncovered Uber rideshare evidence that proved the Osundairo brothers traveled to and from the area of the alleged crime scene during the timeline in question.
Video surveillance camera footage from a clothing store shows that a few days before the alleged attack, the Osundairo brothers bought the ski masks, gloves and red hat that match the description of what Jussie said the attackers were wearing. There was also proof (a sales receipt) that on January 25, 2019, the Osundairo brothers bought the same rope that Jussie said the attackers used to tie a noose around his neck. Before their confession, the Osundairo brothers had their home raided for crucial evidence in the case, they were arrested for battery, and eventually released.
The Osundairo brothers ultimately did not face any criminal charges in this case, which has caused speculation that the brothers received immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony. The Osundairo brothers and their attorney Gloria Rodriguez are all interviewed in the documentary and have remained steadfast in telling their version of the events. In the documentary, Rodriguez denies that there was a secret immunity deal for the Osundairo brothers.
Rodriguez is quite the character: In the documentary, she dresses like she’s about to go to a nightclub instead of dressing in typical attorney business attire. She also openly admits that she was interested in taking the case because she thinks the Osundairo brothers are physically attractive. Rodriguez says in the documentary that the brothers decided to come forward with the truth about participating in the hoax after Jussie did an exclusive interview with ABC News anchor Robin Roberts. The interview was televised on February 15, 2019, just two days after the Osundairo brothers’ home had been raided for evidence.
In the interview with Roberts, Jussie confirmed that the men in the surveillance videos were his attackers. Rodriguez says that she watched the interview with the brothers at the same time. According to Rodriguez, Ola’s reaction was to say: “How could he?” Bola’s reaction was looking down with a defeated expression on his face. The Osundairo brothers don’t have anything substantial to add in this documentary. The brothers actually come across as buffoons, because they try to hype a book that they say that they’re writing about the case, but they keep bungling the title of the book when they mention it.
After the Osundairo brothers came forward with their credible story in February 2019, public sentiment turned against Jussie. In April 2019, he was fired from “Empire,” and his career has not been the same since. Jussie initially agreed to a plea deal to avoid felony charges, but then prosecutors charged him with felonies anyway. He went to trial from November 29, 2021 to December 9, 2021, and was convicted of five felony counts of disorderly conduct for staging a hate crime and lying to Chicago police. Jussie was sentenced to 150 days in jail and ordered to pay a $120,000 restitution fine to the city of Chicago.
In November 2024, his conviction was overturned by an Illinois appeals court, which ruled that the prosecution was unlawful because charges were refiled after prosecutors had previously agreed to drop the case in a plea deal. The original conviction was reversed. This case has tainted not only Jussie’s reputation but also the reputations of many of the law enforcement officers involved.
Kim Foxx, who was Cook County State’s Attorney from December 2016 to December 2024, recused herself from the case in February 2019, due to a personal conflict of interest because, as she later admitted, an unnamed member of the Smollett family had contacted her early on in the investigation. Foxx (who is not interviewed in the documentary) got a lot of criticism from both sides for how the case was handled. But ultimately, Foxx was re-elected during the scandal. After her term ended in 2024, she has since taken a break from public life.
Jussie’s interview in the documentary just repeats his “hate crime” stories that have been proven to be false or can’t be verified as true. The only thing new that he reveals in the documentary is that he admits he didn’t want to hand over his phone to police during the investigation because his phone had incriminating information about his drug activities. In the documentary interview, Jussie will only admit to using marijuana, but his comments confirm public speculation that he was using drugs during this period of time in 2019.
It’s also telling that there are only two people interviewed in the documentary who know Smollett and are defending him—and both of those people have been on Smollett’s payroll at one time or another. The two people are Smollett’s defense attorney Tina Glandian (a partner at the law firm Geragos & Geragos) and Smollett’s former personal assistant April Qualls. Glandian is paid to defend Smollett, so her statements are obviously biased.
As for Qualls, who was Smollett’s personal assistant in 2019, she seems a little unsure that Smollett is telling the truth about this case. Qualls says she doesn’t want to believe that he could be lying. It’s called “denial of facts when you don’t want to believe a former boss whom you trusted could do something this sleazy.”
The documentary doesn’t identify Qualls by her last name. It’s an odd and unnecessary omission, considering that it’s public record that Qualls was questioned by police, and her name has come up many times in media reports about the case. She’s obviously not that concerned about her privacy if she’s willingly being interviewed undisguised and on camera in a documentary.
The other people defending Jussie in this documentary are people who don’t know him and seem to think that any white man seen walking or running on surveillance video near East Lower North Water Street during the time of the alleged attack should be a person of interest in this case—even if the physical descriptions (such as height and weight) do not match what Jussie said in his story. The conspiracy theorists interviewed in the documentary are freelance documentary producer Abigail Carr and freelance journalist Chelli Stanley, who also suggest (without any credible evidence) that racist cops in the Chicago Police Department tampered with video surveillance in the Jussie Smollett case.
The only “proof” that Stanley and Carr mention is video surveillance of an unidentified man running on East Lower North Water Street in the early-morning hours of January 29, 2019, and about 10 seconds of the video appear to be missing. Even with those missing seconds, that’s not proof of video tampering or that the person in the video had any contact with Jussie. These conspiracy theorists apparently want to pretend that the Osundairo brothers’ confessions, Jussie’s disreputable versions of what happened, and other proven evidence don’t exist because the conspiracy theorists think police should be chasing after unidentified people on video surveillance that the conspiracy theorists say has been tampered with by racist police.
Another one of these nonsense interviewees is Chicago resident Rebecca Bell, whose eyewitness statement can’t be verified and can’t be linked to the case’s timeline. Bell, who was a neighbor of Smollett’s at the time, says that she saw a white man walking with a rope on or near East Lower North Water Street at about 12:45 a.m. on January 29, 2019, which is at least 75 minutes before Jussie says the attack happened. Even if Bell really did see a white man with a rope when and where she said she did, there’s no proof it’s the same type of rope that was used in the noosed rope that Jussie gave to police as evidence. A journalistically responsible documentary would never have interviewed Bell, whose statement is unreliable and can’t prove anything in this case.
Another person whose credibility is torpedoed in the documentary is Anthony Moore, who was a Sheraton Hotel security guard working on North Water Street during the early-morning hours of January 29, 2019. Moore (who testified for the defense in Jussie’s trial) claims he saw a white man wearing a ski mask running on the street shortly after the supposed attack happened. However, Moore finds out he was mistaken during the documentary interview, when he is shown a closer look at the person on surveillance video and sees that the person’s race is not white.
Other people interviewed in the documentary are former Chicago Police Department chief of detectives Melissa Staples; former Chicago Police Department superintendent Eddie Johnson; criminal justice journalist Josie Duffy Rice; former WFLD-TV (Fox 32) Chicago reporter Rafer Wiegel; and journalism professor Jarrett Hill. All of them just repeat widely known facts. The documentary epilogue mentions that in 2019, Johnson resigned in disgrace from the Chicago Police Department because of a scandal that has nothing to do with the Jussie Smollett case: Johnson was found asleep in a police vehicle, and he later admitted he was under the influence of alcohol at the time.
The people who think Smollett could be telling the truth in this hoax fail to understand that two things can be true at the same time: There could be racist cops in the Chicago Police Department, and there could be people who’ve been convicted of crimes in Chicago who really are guilty of the crimes of which they’ve been convicted. Being a certain race doesn’t give someone a “pass” or an “excuse” in trying to warp the facts. Unfortunately, “The Truth About Jussie Smollett?” isn’t interested in logic and facts as much as it’s interested in tacky sensationalism and giving a documentary platform to a very troubled person who seems to be his own worst enemy.
Netflix premiered “The Truth About Jussie Smollett?” on August 22, 2025.