The Truth About Jussie Smollett?

What was the point of this documentary? After watching the Jussie Smollett Netflix documentary, my opinion hasn't changed if anything, he looks even more guilty. This whole thing is a cringe-worthy disaster. He's doubling down instead of owning up, and it's almost painfully pathetic to watch. The guy torpedoed his own career, and anyone still defending him is willfully ignoring reality or just plain stupid.

Look - some people hate the fact that these kinds of documentaries are on Netflix. I LOVE IT. This further cements the perception of guilt. Comes in handy when enough time has gone by, and enough doting fans have squeaked loudly enough, that people may begin to question what they have heard. Nope. It's true. He's a narcissist who pulled a bad hoax. Others will disagree.

It's hard to imagine a more embarrassing and destructive event in one's life, and it is so complete that no retelling of the tale can undo any of the affects of said event. You would have to move to a distant planet to escape this. The evidence is too compelling, the hoax so well investigated that attempts to retroactively provide a measure of redemption fail profoundly. When Smollett exclaimed he was "not suicidal" while being taken to jail after conviction belies the fact that he destroyed his life, killed his own reputation with such a fierce finality that it is not reversible.

When Netflix dropped The Truth About Jussie Smollett? On August 22, 2025, it came dressed up as a thoughtful, "multi-perspective" documentary-complete with a question mark poised to signal fair-mindedness. But make no mistake: this film feels more like a cleverly disguised PR vehicle than an honest investigation.

From the get-go, director Gagan Rehill levers the ambiguity of the case-conviction, reversal, competing narratives-to nudge the viewer toward one conclusion: that Smollett's version deserves equal weight. But one can't help but notice the heavy-handed framing. The central tension the doc presents-hate-crime victim or schemer-for-hire-leans uncomfortably toward absolving Smollett, despite the mountain of evidence suggesting otherwise.

Let's be clear on the facts: Smollett was found guilty in 2021 of staging the attack and filing a false police report-convicted on five felony counts and handed a jail sentence. Yes, his conviction was overturned in 2024-but not because the evidence was exonerating. The Illinois Supreme Court reversed the verdict on narrow due-process grounds: prosecutorial misconduct, not innocence.

Yet the film props up Smollett's denial as the moral high ground. One can't help but feel the editing hand gently sets him up as a misunderstood martyr. Meanwhile, you'd expect a fair documentary to weigh the testimonies of the Osundairo brothers-who claimed he hired them to stage the attack-against his increasingly polished defense. Instead, the editing gives Smollett far more sympathy, even as legal documents still imply serious wrongdoing.

And how about that question mark in the title-it smartly deflects criticism. "Oh, it's just asking questions," they'll say. But let's be honest: we all know it's not an open-ended inquiry. It's a Trojan horse for redemption TV.

At the end of the doc, Netflix's armchair detective stance invites viewers to re-evaluate the story of media overreach, police screw-ups, fractured narratives, and institutional bias. Yet what's glaringly omitted in that invitation is the clear line between investigative nuance and sympathy laundering.

Closing Thought (with a wink at Netflix's weakness for edgy doc series): If Netflix is so committed to making every controversial figure "complex," why not go bigger? Maybe they'd like to air Onision's YouTube "documentaries" next-where he claims (with equally persuasive logic and zero evidence) that he's innocent too, because, well... words and feelings.

While the documentary is well-made, with strong cinematography and storytelling, it ultimately feels like a missed opportunity to explore the deeper political context.

Rather than providing clarity, it seems to leave just enough ambiguity to allow room for manipulation. Many believed from the beginning that political motivations were at play in Jussie Smollett's actions, yet the film avoids thoroughly investigating who else may have influenced or stood to benefit from the situation.

The incident occurred during a peak in identity politics and social advocacy in 2019, a time when public outrage-particularly within the Black community-was often leveraged to push broader LGBTQ political agendas. This dynamic, and the psychological or strategic motivations behind such acts, is notably absent from the documentary's analysis.

There's also little discussion of the broader industry or political context-especially potential connections to figures like Lee Daniels or organizations like GLAAD, who may have had vested interests in shaping the narrative. Instead, the film leans toward rehabilitating a story that, for many, never felt credible and was even offensive to real victims. Comparing sexuality-based discrimination to the historical trauma of racial violence, for political gain, is a line that deserves much more scrutiny.

The documentary would have been far more compelling had it examined the complex intersection of media, activism, and Hollywood influence with the seriousness it deserves. Jussie employed a false equivalence tactic to manipulate public sentiment-but he was not acting alone.