Biggest takeaways from Jussie Smollett’s criminal trial testimony
CHICAGO — Former “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett testified in his own defense Monday on day five of his criminal trial on charges he faked a hate crime in 2019 to get attention and then lied to police about it.
Smollett, 39, is facing six felony counts of lying to police and could be slapped with a sentence of up to three years behind bars if he’s convicted. Under oath, he maintained his innocence Monday and testified “there was no hoax” and the hate crime he suffered was real and carried out by brothers Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo.
Here are six takeaways from his testimony:
Smollett said he kept a noose around his neck because his creative director told him to.
When police arrived at Smollett’s home about an hour after the alleged attack, the actor was captured on body cam footage still wearing a rope-like noose around his neck and told cops “I just wanted you to see it.” On Monday, he testified that he had taken the rope off after he got back to his apartment but put it back on after his creative director Frank Gaston told him to.
“Why would I keep it on?” Smollett said when asked why he took off the rope.
“Frank told me to put the stuff back on as to not mess with the evidence.”
Smollett said he didn’t want to call the police because he doesn’t trust cops and didn’t want to look weak.
The actor testified “he would’ve never called the police” after the incident because as a “black man in America, I don’t trust police.”
He also said as an ambitious actor, he hesitated over how it could impact his career.
“I want to play a boxer, I want to play a superhero, I want to blow stuff up” Smollett testified. “The moment I got beat I became a f—-t who got his ass whooped.”
The actor claims CNN host Don Lemon told him Chicago cops didn’t believe his story.
During his testimony, Smollett said that he received a text from Lemon saying the CNN host had gotten a text from Chicago police saying they didn’t believe the actor’s story, which is why Smollett was uneasy about turning over his phone records to investigators.
Smollett claims he had a sexual relationship with one of the brothers.
Abimbola Osundairo, who alleges the actor paid him to “fake beat him up,” had a sexual relationship with Smollett, he testified. The actor said the two did drugs together, made out and masturbated each other at a gay bathhouse in Chicago’s Boystown neighborhood. Last week, Osundairo said under oath that he is heterosexual and did not masturbate with Jussie at the bathhouse, but did admit he had gone to the location with him on at least one occasion.
Police said Smollett staged the hoax because he was upset with his salary. This is how much he was making:
The actor testified that when he was hired on “Empire” in 2014, he was paid roughly $27,000-28,000 per episode for a 10-episode season. His pay was bumped up modestly at the end of the second season but after the series’ success, he renegotiated his contract and was pulling in $80,000 per episode by season 3, $90,000 by season 4 and $100,000 by season 5 when he was fired. Each season after the first was 18 episodes long.
Smollett is a pothead.
The actor regularly smokes blunts, which he rolls in Swisher Sweet brand cigars, he said on the stand. As an actor on “Empire,” he said he routinely smoked a blunt around lunch time and would drive around the neighborhood where the studio was located. He also said he routinely drove around in his car alone, smoking up, as part of his creative process as a singer/songwriter.
