EXCLUSIVE: The Jussie Smollett hoax hate crime attack saga is set to be explored in a new documentary.
Netflix has ordered The Truth About Jussie Smollett?, a 90-minute feature doc about the case, which despite happening in 2019 was just wrapped up, legally speaking, a couple of months ago.
It will feature an interview with Jussie Smollett himself.
The project comes from All3Media-owned production company Raw, which is behind two of Netflix’s weirder true-crime tales – The Tinder Swindler and Don’t F**k with Cats.
The Netflix logline says that the doc is a “shocking true story of an allegedly fake story that some now say might just be a true story. With first-hand interviews from those at the helm, including investigating police, lawyers, journalists and Jussie himself, this compelling documentary invites the audience to decide for themselves who is telling The Truth About Jussie Smollett?”
Gagan Rehill, who directed Netflix’s Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal, is helming the doc.
In January 2019, the Empire star claimed to have been a victim of a hate-crime but was later accused of staging the attack. He was charged with filing a false police report but the charges were dropped when he did community service. In 2020, he was re-indicted and convicted on five felony counts, including lying to the police, in December 2021, and was sentenced to jail in March 2022 but only served six days. Last November, the Illinois Supreme Court overturned the legal consequences Smollett suffered due to the high profile incident with the court finding that special prosecutor Dan Webb’s decision to retry Smollett had violated the performer’s rights.
In May, officials announced that they had reached a settlement with Smollett and the actor said he was giving $60,000 to charity.
Raw’s Tom Sheahan and Tim Wardle are exec producers on the doc, which will launch on August 22.
Gagan Rehill said, “I’m very excited to be sharing this film with Netflix viewers. This story is a thrilling ride, and we were lucky enough to have access to the key players. I wanted this documentary to balance their competing narratives and to also use their compelling, colourful testimonies to thread the light and shade of the story through the film. But much more than that, I wanted this film to speak to the particular moment of rapid cultural change when this takes place in 2019; when, as a society, we were becoming more combative, more polarised, more divergent over our shared reality – when we began to lack a common singular Truth.”
