Finally, Jurnee Smollett’s reaction to brother accusation released.
In February 2019, Jussie Smollett, Jurnee Smollett’s brother, defended not guilty to six counts of unruly behavior for allegedly lying to police about being the victim of a hate crime.
Chicago police claim that Smollett paid two brothers to stage an anti-gay and racist attack against him on Jan. 29, 2019.
Jurnee Smollett is speaking about her brother Jussie Smollett, 38, charge in 2019 for the first time. In a new interview with a reporter, the 33-year-old actress talks about how her family has been affected after he was arrested for staging a hate crime against himself in Chicago.
Jurnee affirms her brother’s innocence. “It’s been f**king painful, one of the most painful things my family’s ever experienced to love someone as much as we love my brother and to watch someone who you love that much go through something like this, that is so public, has been devastating,” she says. “I was already in a very dark space for a number of reasons, and I’ve tried to not let it make me pessimistic. But everyone who knows me knows that I love my brother and I believe my brother.”
Jurnee Smollett first reaction to her brother accusation
Jurnee says her support for her brother hasn’t negatively affected her Hollywood career.
“We are blessed to have a community of people who know him, and know that he wouldn’t do this,” she says. “I mean, f**k, man, I look at him sometimes and I’m like, ‘He’s so strong,’” she adds.
“I’ve tried to not let it make me pessimistic. But everyone who knows me knows that I love my brother and I believe my brother,” Jurnee said in an interview.
As for what the Empire star has been up to, she says that “he’s staying creative, as creatives do,” and “singing, writing, working on music.”
About Jurnee’s career life
Jurnee has been acting since she was a child, starring in Full House, Eve’s Bayou, Friday Night Lights, Birds of Prey, and WGN’s groundbreaking show Underground. Despite her success, the 33-year-old has considered leaving Hollywood because the glittery façade doesn’t match up to reality.
Jurnee is busy with her own career and stars in HBO‘s highly apprehended Lovecraft Country, a sci-fi horror series that returns the racist terrors of Jim Crow America, which drops Aug. 16. The timeliness of the project isn’t expended on Jurnee.
“We’re telling the story of heroes that go on a quest to disrupt white supremacy, and it’s maddening that in the year 2020 it’s still relevant,” she says.
“This was a project about enslaved people. There’d be no way for me to straighten my hair, which is what he was suggesting — a hot comb didn’t exist,” she says. “There are just so many ways in which this industry will try, subliminally or overtly, to erase your Blackness.”
Jurnee Smollett is now very vocal in how she expects to be treated.
Jurnee is proud of the project, and also says that after past negative experiences on set, she is no longer afraid to have her needs known.
“And I don’t apologize,” she says. “I’ll be like, ‘Listen, this fake-a** sexual harassment meeting that we’re having, I’m going to raise my hand now and let you guys know that the standards that they’re setting are the bare minimum.”
This is the confidence she didn’t possess in her twenties. Lovecraft Country is the first set where she says she has not felt sexually attacked or threatened.
“I don’t know that I can confidently say that I worked on one job prior to Lovecraft from the time I was 12 on where I hadn’t been sexually harassed, whether it was by an AD, a co-star, director, producer,” she says.
But she makes it known that times have changed for her and other powerful women in the business. “We’re no longer asking for a seat at the table,” she says. “We’re building our own motherf**king table.”
About her personal life
During that time, she was separating from her husband of almost a decade, musician Josiah Bell, with whom she had a 3-year-old son, Hunter.
Her family name may have been mired in scandal and she may have been dealing with regret but fortunately, none of it affected her career.
She had no use for posting Black squares in solidarity for Black Lives Matter after the tragic deaths of African Americans, especially George Floyd.
“Oh, the rage,” she claims, “the rage I feel in my body.”
Please visit the website to read more news: https://usdaynews.com/
Like the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/USdayNWES
Follow the Twitter page: https://twitter.com/usdaynews