We all know the truth about Jussie Smollett: In a desperate attempt to further his career, a talented actor and singer blew it up instead by allegedly fabricating an elaborate hoax assault on himself. But what if the attack — and Smollett’s story — has been real and truthful this whole time? That’s the question at the center of Gagan Rehill’s new Raw Productions documentary for Netflix, The Truth About Jussie Smollett??
Yes, the truth is so unclear, the title required not one, but two question marks.
In Chicago in 2019, Smollett said he was jumped by two white men who yelled racist and homophobic slurs at him, leaving him beaten and with a noose around his neck. But then Smollett was found by law enforcement to have orchestrated the entire thing, hiring his friends and Empire background actors Abel and Ola Osundairo to carry out the deed.
Smollett was found guilty by a jury in December 2021 of felony disorderly conduct for falsely reporting to police that he was the victim of a hate crime. He served six days of a five-month jail sentence in 2022 before an ongoing appeals process brought him out from behind bars. In November 2024, Smollett’s conviction was overturned by the Illinois Supreme Court, which also deemed he could not be retried.
Through it all, Smollett has maintained his innocence and not changed his story (though he’s since added a bit more for The Truth About Jussie Smollett??). His side of the story basically hangs on the suggestion that the Osundairos lied both to and for the police in exchange for immunity from guns charges for Ola and also to clear his record.
“What a gift as a director,” Rehill, the director behind Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal, says of his latest scandalous assignment.
“You can tilt it one way [and] it will look like one thing,” he said of he-said/she-said he-said/they-all-said nature of the Smollett case. “You can tilt it another and there’s another story behind it.”
Via Zoom, Rehill isn’t tipping his hand as to which way he tilts on the ordeal; though he, like all of us, pretty quickly bought the hoax narrative hook, line and sinker. But he went into the project with an open mind — and then he had his mind blown open (a little bit, at least) by what he found.
“I want … viewers to have a conversation, a debate about that themselves,” Rehill told The Hollywood Reporter. “That’s part of the documentary for me — the after conversation, the aftermath of watching it. For that reason, I’m sort of taking myself out of the equation in terms of where I land.”
Fine. For what it’s worth, there have been a whole gamut of responses from Rehill’s small sample size in screenings.
“Everyone comes away from this with a different sort of opinion,” Rehill said. “I’ve spoken to a few people now who’ve watched it, who weren’t part of the production, who have all given completely different reads. Completely different. And I think that’s part of the nature of this … it’s open to interpretation.”
Jussie Smollett and Taraji P. Henson in Fox’s Empire
Chuck Hodes/FOX
In the divisive America in which the Smollett something happened — Trump’s first term as president was winding down at the time — the concept of “truth” depends on which cable news channel you flip to. And the media is as big a supporting character in the Smollett saga as anyone on Rehill’s deep bench of interview subjects in the doc.
“This film is about whether you believe Jussie or not, but it’s also about a reaction to [the news coverage of his case] as well,” Rehill said. “It’s just very interesting that people’s trust in mainstream media and in the police has been eroded so much that they have to open the door to alternate truths, or alternate results or verdicts.”
The Truth About Jussie Smollett?? is now streaming on Netflix — what’s your verdict?
