“Empire” creator Lee Daniels says he'd work with Jussie Smollett again after hoax: 'He was a son to me'
Their relationship is "complicated," he says.
Lee Daniels is open to working with and casting actor Jussie Smollett again.
The producer/director said so Monday in an appearance on iHeartRadio's The Breakfast Club for his new film The Deliverance.
"He was a son to me. And he also represented me. And he also represented the movement that I tried to start, which I didn't know I was starting," said Daniels, a cocreator of TV's Empire, on which Smollett starred for five of its six seasons. "I was so busy, worried about Cookie's hat and the music that we were playing [on Empire.]"
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Jussie Smollett and Lee Daniels talk 'Empire' in 2017.Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.
Smollett played Jamal, a son of the central Lyon family in the music industry-set drama that aired for six seasons, from 2015 to 2020, on Fox. He was written out of the show's final season.
The actor faced legal trouble in 2019, after allegedly telling police that he was attacked on the street by men yelling homophobic and racist slurs. (Smollett is gay and Black.) He claimed they tied a noose around his neck and poured an unidentified substance on him, but he was charged with having filed a false report. While those initial charges were dropped, they were refiled. Two brothers later allegedly told police that he paid them to fake the attack to drum up publicity. Smollett repeatedly denied wrongdoing.
The actor was sentenced to 30 months of felony probation — 150 days of which were to be served in jail — and required to pay the city of Chicago $120,000 in restitution and a fine of $25,000. However, an appeals court later granted his release pending the appeal of his conviction, which the Illinois Supreme Court agreed to hear in March.
Related: Empire actor Jussie Smollett checks into rehab after 'extremely difficult past few years'
While Daniels and Smollett were once reported to have been out of touch with one another, Daniels said they text now.
"Look, it's complicated," the director said. "It's so complicated, guys. It's so complicated. Life is so complicated."
He said he was unsure of what had happened.
"I still don't know what to believe. Honestly, I don't know what to believe," he said. "People say he didn't do it, he did do it. God bless him on his journey."
In June, Smollett debuted a movie that he cowrote, produced, and directed, The Lost Holliday, at the American Black Film Festival in Miami. According to The Hollywood Reporter, he commented on his ongoing appeal.
"Sometimes you just gotta bite the bullet and let everybody think that you're crazy, that you're shady, that you're a fraud, whatever they're going to think," he said. "And then they'll figure it out. They'll figure it out because I can't sit here forever trying to explain."
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