Jussie Smollett, the gay black actor who appears on the TV show Empire, wants the world to know he’s okay. He did a concert last night during which he addressed the alleged hate-crime assault he suffered early Tuesday morning near a Subway sandwich shop in downtown Chicago. In his latest comments on his case Smollett said,“There has been a lot of stuff said about me that’s absolutely not true.” He then paused to glance at the balcony and add, “I’m sure my lawyer’s sitting up there like. ‘No, Jussie, no! No! Shut the f*** up and sing.’” Consulting his notes, he moved on to “four points” he said he wanted to make: “I was bruised but my ribs were not cracked; they were not broken. I went to the doctor immediately. . . . I was not hospitalized. Both my doctors in L.A. and Chicago cleared me to perform, but said to take care, obviously. And above all: I fought the f*** back.”
Smollett has previously said he was talking to his manager on his cellphone during the attack and still had that phone after the attack. Chicago reporter Rafer Weigel of Fox32 News tweeted that police sources had confirmed that Smollett also still had the Subway sandwich on him when he turned up at an apartment building shortly after the alleged attack.
So Smollett underwent a vicious beating by two attackers that apparently lasted less than 60 seconds, since that is the reported gap in surveillance footage between an image of him without a rope around his neck and an image of him with the rope. Smollett now says he fought back, but apparently he lost neither his Subway sandwich nor his cell phone in this brawl. Also he didn’t immediately call the police on that phone to describe the suspects and inform the police which way they had gone when they suddenly ran away from him, but instead waited about 40 minutes to inform the police.
Also Smollett for some reason thinks his lawyers are eager for him not to publicly discuss the case. Curious.