One in all Hollywood’s largest scandals in recent times is the subject of Netflix’s newest unique documentary.
Deadline reported on Tuesday, July 22, that the streaming service has ordered the 90-minute documentary The Reality About Jussie Smollett?, which can look at actor Jussie Smollett‘s hate crime hoax scandal. The movie will characteristic a brand new interview with Smollett, 6 years after the drama started to unfold.
Netflix describes the documentary as a “stunning true story of an allegedly pretend story that some now say would possibly simply be a real story,” per Deadline. “With first-hand interviews from these on the helm, together with investigating police, attorneys, journalists, and Jussie himself, this compelling documentary invitations the viewers to determine for themselves who’s telling the reality about Jussie Smollett?”
Gagan Rehill, who beforehand directed Netflix’s Ashley Madison: Intercourse, Lies & Scandal docuseries, serves because the movie’s director, whereas Uncooked’s Tom Sheahan and Tim Wardle function government producers.
“I’m very excited to be sharing this movie with Netflix viewers. This story is an exhilarating trip, and we had been fortunate sufficient to have entry to the important thing gamers,” Rehill mentioned in a press release. “I needed this documentary to stability their competing narratives and to additionally use their compelling, colourful testimonies to string the sunshine and shade of the story by means of the movie.”
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He continued, “However rather more than that, I needed this movie to talk to the actual second of speedy cultural change when this takes place in 2019; when, as a society, we had been turning into extra combative, extra polarized, extra divergent over our shared actuality — after we started to lack a typical singular Reality.”
Smollett’s authorized drama started again in January 2019 when he claimed he was the sufferer of a hate crime in Chicago. On the time, the Empire actor alleged he was attacked by two people who known as him racist and homophobic slurs, positioned a noose round his neck, and poured a chemical substance on him.
The next month, Smollett was charged with felony disorderly conduct for submitting a false police report after allegedly staging the assaults in opposition to himself. Although the fees had been later dropped, new expenses had been filed in opposition to Smollett in 2020, and he was convicted on 5 counts of disorderly conduct in 2021. He was sentenced to 150 days in jail and 30 months of probation, however solely spent six days behind bars earlier than being launched on bond pending enchantment.
Smollett’s convictions had been overturned and dismissed by the Supreme Courtroom of Illinois in November 2024 after it was decided that the particular prosecutor’s try and retry the case violated Smollett’s rights.
Smollett reached a settlement with town of Chicago again in Might, agreeing to pay $50,000 in charity to settle town’s civil lawsuit searching for restitution for the price of the hate crime investigation.
“Although I used to be exonerated by the Illinois Supreme Courtroom in a unanimous choice and the civil case will now be dismissed, I’m conscious that it’s going to not change everybody’s thoughts about me or the assault I skilled,” Smollett wrote in a prolonged Might 23 Instagram assertion. “Nonetheless, regardless of arduous and costly makes an attempt to punish me, I’m harmless within the eyes of God and our felony justice system.
He continued, “What I’ve to do now could be transfer ahead. I’ll proceed creating my artwork, combating passionately for causes I maintain pricey, and defending my integrity and household title with the reality.”
The Reality About Jussie Smollett?, Documentary Premiere, Friday, August 22, Netflix