Jussie Smollett had career alternatives after being arrested for allegedly staging a racist hate crime in 2019.
The former Empire actor was charged by Chicago police just weeks after the incident in February 2019, which led to Smollett being suspended from the hit Fox series. The entertainer was ultimately sentenced to 150 days in jail and ordered to pay a $25,000 fine, but in November 2024, the conviction was overturned, with Smollett paying $10,000 and doing community service.
Nearly two months after the release of the Netflix documentary The Truth About Jussie Smollett?, the actor was a guest on Kandi Buruss‘ Speak on It podcast. Around the hour-mark of the video below, Smollett was asked if he had fear that the incident would “end” his career.
“Hell yeah. Absolutely. I was looking for other things to do,” he told Burruss. “I’m just like, ‘Forget this.'”
“I don’t know. I’ll become a tap dancer or a teacher or a nanny, something–an au pair, a governess, you know. I don’t know. A stripper,” he said. “You know, I got the moves.”
Smollett added that he felt “angry at celebrity culture” after everything went down. “It’s just like, ‘This is crap. This is bull. Fame is not real. It is not real,'” he continued. “‘Cause people telling you that they love you one minute and they don’t love you the next and all of this type of stuff. It was just a lot.”
“So, I certainly thought about…but I’m okay with acknowledging that not only do I love doing what I do, but my ego won’t let some bull run me out of my life,” he added.
Smollett has stood firm on his 2019 claim, and told Variety in an August article that he “never” changed his story.
“Every single other person’s story has changed multiple times. Mine has never. I have nothing to gain from this,” he told the publication.
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