The Truth About Jussie Smollett? features interviews with journalists, law enforcement, lawyers, and Smollett himself
A new documentary is coming to Netflix exploring the twists and turns of Jussie Smollett‘s alleged attack in Chicago. On Thursday, the streamer released a trailer for The Truth About Jussie Smollett?, out Aug. 22, which interviews law enforcement, journalists, and Smollet himself in search for the truth.
The producers behind docu standouts Don’t F**k with Cats and Tinder Swindler are also behind this new film, which revisits the January 2019 alleged attack.
“They see an actor called Jussie Smollett with a noose around his neck. He says he was the victim of a hate crime,” says Melissa Staples, formerly of the Chicago Police Department. “I thought it was a horrible crime at first, until it started to fall apart.”
The trailer touches on the media frenzy surrounding the Smollett case, as those involved break down the evidence and the Chicago Police’s “century-long history of lying to the public,” before ending with Smollett walking in for an interview.
In 2019, Smollett went to the police in Chicago claiming that two men assaulted him outside his apartment, put a noose around his neck, and called him racial slurs. In 2021, Smollett was then convicted on five charges of lying to the police and sentenced to 150 days in prison the following March. In November 2024, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that a special prosecutor’s case against the actor shouldn’t have gone forward because of a previous no-prosecution agreement and overturned the conviction.
“[It’s] a shocking true story of an allegedly fake story that some now say might just be a true story,” reads a description of the documentary from Netflix. “Featuring interviews with police, lawyers, journalists, investigators who claim to have uncovered new evidence about the case, and with Jussie himself, this compelling documentary invites the audience to decide for themselves who is telling The Truth About Jussie Smollett?“
