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Hollywood just proved they’ll rehabilitate anyone if there’s money to be made.

The truth doesn’t matter when there are streaming subscriptions on the line.

And Jussie Smollett just got Netflix to hand him one big payday that will make you sick.

Netflix Turns Hate Crime Hoax Into Cash Grab

Netflix announced they’re giving convicted hoax perpetrator Jussie Smollett a prime platform to spin his lies all over again.¹

The streaming giant ordered The Truth About Jussie Smollett?, a 90-minute documentary set to premiere August 22 that will feature an interview with Smollett himself.

But here’s what makes this truly disgusting – Netflix is marketing this travesty as “a shocking true story of an allegedly fake story that some now say might just be a true story.”²

In other words, they’re going to let Smollett pretend his staged hate crime attack might actually have been real.

The documentary comes from Raw, the production company behind Netflix’s The Tinder Swindler and Don’t F**k with Cats.

Director Gagan Rehill promised the film would “balance their competing narratives” and feature interviews with police, lawyers, journalists, and investigators who claim to have “new evidence.”³

The Real Story Netflix Doesn’t Want You to Remember

Let’s refresh everyone’s memory about what actually happened in this case.

In January 2019, Smollett – then starring on Fox’s Empire – claimed he was attacked by two men near his Chicago apartment who shouted racist and homophobic slurs, poured bleach on him, and wrapped a noose around his neck.

Chicago police conducted an exhaustive investigation that cost taxpayers over $130,000.

What they discovered was that Smollett paid brothers Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo $3,500 to stage the entire attack.⁴

The brothers testified under oath that Smollett hired them to carry out the fake assault as a publicity stunt because he was unhappy with his salary on Empire.

Smollett was arrested, charged with filing false police reports, and later convicted by a jury on five felony counts of disorderly conduct in 2021.

He was sentenced to 150 days in jail, though he only served six days before being released pending appeal.

Supreme Court Lets Him Off on a Technicality

Here’s where the story gets even more infuriating.

The Illinois Supreme Court overturned Smollett’s conviction in November 2024 – not because he was innocent, but on a legal technicality.⁵

The court ruled 5-0 that Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx had made a deal to drop the original charges in exchange for Smollett forfeiting his $10,000 bond and completing community service.

When a special prosecutor later re-charged Smollett, the Supreme Court said this violated his due process rights under the original agreement.

“This was not a decision on the merits of the case – whether or not he’s guilty or not guilty, or he did it or he didn’t do it,” legal analyst Irv Miller explained to CBS Chicago.⁶

The court explicitly stated: “We are aware that this case has generated significant public interest and that many people were dissatisfied with the resolution of the original case and believed it to be unjust.”⁷

Even Special Prosecutor Dan Webb, who secured Smollett’s conviction, made it clear the ruling changed nothing about the facts.

“Today’s ruling does not change how deeply proud I am of the work my Special Prosecutor’s office accomplished; nor does it undermine the jury’s verdict, and most importantly, it does not clear Jussie Smollett’s name – he is not innocent,” Webb stated.⁸

Smollett Cashes In While Maintaining His Lies

After getting his conviction overturned, Smollett reached a settlement with the city of Chicago in May 2025.

Instead of paying the $130,000 in taxpayer money spent investigating his hoax, he agreed to donate $50,000 to a local charity to make the lawsuit go away.⁹

In his settlement statement, Smollett had the audacity to claim he was “exonerated” and maintained he was “innocent both in the eyes of God and of our criminal justice system.”¹⁰

He continues to insist the attack actually happened, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Now Netflix is rewarding this behavior by giving him a national platform to spread his lies while they profit from the controversy.

Hollywood’s War on Truth Continues

This Netflix documentary represents everything wrong with today’s entertainment industry.

They’re taking a case where the evidence clearly showed a staged attack designed to exploit racial tensions, and turning it into content that suggests maybe the hoax was actually real.

Director Rehill admitted the documentary aims to examine “the particular moment of rapid cultural change when this takes place in 2019; when, as a society, we were becoming more combative, more polarized, more divergent over our shared reality.”¹¹

In other words, they’re using Smollett’s lies to push a narrative about how we can’t trust anything anymore.

The brothers who carried out the fake attack for Smollett released a statement through their attorney after the Supreme Court ruling.

“The Brothers stand by their sworn testimony; their honesty, veracity, credibility, and truthfulness for their role in the event was not questioned by the Supreme Court,” the statement read.¹²

But Netflix apparently thinks their testimony – and the jury’s verdict – doesn’t matter if there’s money to be made.

This documentary isn’t about finding the truth.

It’s about rehabilitating a convicted hoaxer’s image while Netflix cashes in on the controversy.

The streaming service is betting that enough time has passed for people to forget the facts of this case.

They’re counting on viewers being more interested in a compelling story than the actual truth.

And they’re giving Smollett exactly what he wanted all along – a national platform to play the victim while profiting from his lies.

The fact that Netflix thinks this is appropriate content tells you everything you need about where Hollywood’s priorities lie.

Truth doesn’t matter. Justice doesn’t matter. Facts don’t matter.

All that matters is whether it will generate subscriptions and social media buzz.

Jussie Smollett staged a hate crime, lied to police, wasted taxpayer resources, and smeared Trump supporters as racists.

Now Netflix is rewarding him with a payday and a platform.

This is exactly why Americans have lost trust in both the justice system and the entertainment industry.