Jussie Smollett thought there was ‘no way’ people would believe a ‘stupid rumor’

More than five years later, I still don’t know what to make of Jussie Smollett or the “staged attack hoax” or whatever we should call it. In 2019, Jussie claimed that a couple of MAGA-types attacked him, poured bleach on him and put a noose around his head in Chicago. The Chicago police rather quickly decided that Smollett was lying and began investigating him, and they found some evidence which seemed to suggest that Jussie did stage the attack. What happened after that was a hell of a lot of politics: Donald Trump & his supporters targeted Jussie, Jussie was charged with crimes (like filing a false police report), then the charges were dropped and then he was charged again and found guilty. He was sentenced to five months in prison, then he got out in five days. Like, it’s all been A LOT. Throughout it all, Jussie has continued to say that he’s innocent, truthful and consistent. Well, Jussie has a new film coming out and he sat down with People Magazine to talk about his life after the past five years and more. Some highlights:

Smollett maintains his innocence to this day. “I was numb,” he says, recalling the incident to PEOPLE. “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 thought that there was “no way” the public could believe “a stupid rumor”: He thought that the majority of the noise was being created by “haters.” “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…We’re still dealing with the repercussions from that narrative. We’re still dealing with that every day.”

He entered outpatient rehab last year: “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.”

His darkest day: Smollett pinpoints Feb. 21, 2019 — the day he was arrested. “That was a pretty dark day because that’s when everything clicked to me of 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.”

He didn’t know how politically charged he would become: “I don’t know that, back then, I entirely knew just how caught up in that conversation I was. I really didn’t. I wasn’t aware of just how much of a political football I was — from both sides. Things can’t be stifled because the world is going to keep on spinning.”

[From People]

I mean… what I’ll say is that if I was in Jussie’s situation, I would not admit to anything either. I would play it the way he’s playing it, maybe even go a little bit further to sow doubt about the Chicago PD’s initial investigation. That’s something that’s stuck with me after all of these years – how quickly the Chicago cops decided that Jussie was lying, and how quickly the investigation turned on him. And Jussie is right that it became this really crazy, hyper-politicized situation, with Trump and his MAGA cult trying to say all victims of hate crimes are lying or whatever. All in all, I still have questions, but I’ve made my peace with never really knowing the real story. Which is probably a win for Jussie.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.