“Here’s what folks are concerned about – that what he did might undermine future victims, legitimate victims of hate crimes,” the actor’s former friend, television journalist Don Lemon said on CNN this week (Lemon is accused of tipping off Smollett to the fact the police did not believe him).
In believing he could orchestrate a bogus race crime Smollett appears to have been swept up in a grand delusion. He told police that, while returning home after buying a salad at Subway, he was set up on by two attackers – one a “massive” man in a ski mask. He fought back, he said, suffering blows and a kick to the back. Only after the two fled did he notice the noose around his neck. He’d survived an attempted lynching.
What had really happened, it emerged in court, is that Nigerian-born brothers, Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, were hired by the actor to inflict a few perfunctory bruises. Abimbola was an extra on Empire whom Smollett had befriended. The actor said that the $3,500 cheque written out to Osundairo was for a “a meal and workout plan” to help him stay in shape. The jury this week shot down that assertion.
Smollett had initially received an outpouring of support – not least from fellow celebrities. Terence Howard, who plays his father on Empire, for instance, tweeted, “All your lil homies got you … We love the hell outta you”. He deceived the world – but especially his (now former) colleagues on Empire.
As is the way with big lies, Smollett’s subterfuge had soon metastasised. He claimed the attack was motivated by his criticisms of the Trump administration. And in February 2019 interview with Good Morning America he said that those who didn’t believe him “didn’t want to see the truth”. “It feels like if I had said it was a Muslim, or a Mexican, or someone black, I feel like the doubters would have supported me much more. A lot more.”
The police moved quickly to pick apart his story and, with the case against the actor having finally gone to trial, the jury didn’t hesitate in branding him a liar. And so a rising star who had it all – a burgeoning career as a musician, a $100,000 per week gig on one of America’s top rated dramas – threw everything away.
It’s a reminder celebrity doesn’t just rope you off from the rest of the world. In Smollett’s case it ushered him into a parallel dimension where lies could be spun into truth and actions did not have consequences. Or so he believed. And then reality came crashing through as his deceptions were held up to the light. And, having once had the world at his feet, all he presides over now is, to paraphrase Johnny Cash and Trent Reznor, an empire of dirt.
