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Jussie Smollett is ready for viewers to see another side of themselves about the special forces.
The 43-year-old Empire alum recently spoke with people with her castmate Eva Marcil in the Special Forces. At the world’s toughest test red carpet event in Los Angeles, Fox’s competition series admitted that “we couldn’t even talk to the public in ways I didn’t even think about it and even went.”
His decision to take part in the fourth season of the show, which premiered on September 25th, was simply about “young people.”
“It really shows them that my nie and ne, and all the young people there that are knocked down, you’re coming back, you’re knocked down, you’re coming back,” he explains.
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Smollett, who is releasing his new album breakout on September 30th, called his experience in the Special Forces “very calm,” saying, “it’s not always easy to be vulnerable… And again, the physicality of this, we’re not athletes, but we’re athletic.
“But for me, the most difficult thing was mental,” he says of the show. “And it, and it was really special to get through it.”
“So I hope it’s a great equalizer and that this is also a great kind of who I am and that it’s all love,” he concludes.
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Marcille, 40, says fans can see the series’ true smollett because it was “unscripted” before attending the reality show.
“What you’re watching is his feelings through his music, so you think who he is through it. “I don’t think anyone outside his family and his close friend, his fiancee (Jabari Red), really has the opportunity to see who Jesse is until you see this show.”
A real housewife of Atlanta alumni says that Smollett is “a man stripped of all the pleasures and luxury of life, putting him in the most crazy situations and forgets that there is a camera there.
“And that’s what you got, that’s what I’m seeing,” she adds. “That’s what I’ve learned and that’s what I think the world is trying to see.”
Smollett’s reality TV turn comes six years after the actor reported in 2019 that he was a victim of a hate crime. Smollett, a gay man, claimed that two men attacked him while screaming racist and homophobic slander outside the building of his Chicago apartment.
Following the investigation into the case, Smollett filed a false police report and is said to have staged a hate crime on the allegedly employing former Empire extras, Abimbola “Mula” and Orabinjo “Ora Ozundailo.”
After Smollett was charged twice and cleared, the conviction of the actor was overturned by the state, resulting in the court proceedings and lawsuits being resolved. The city then pursued a lawsuit against Smollett in an attempt to retrieve the money spent on the investigation.
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Smollett reached a settlement with the city of Chicago in May and agreed to make a charity donation of $50,000 in exchange for the lawsuit being dropped.
In August, the actor was opened up about the long-term impact of the incident, saying, “When I first met people, I’m still unstable.”
“I don’t know if they’re coming to the room thinking they’re this garbage guy who did something I didn’t do, or if I think I’m this good guy who made a raw deal,” he shared at the time.
Smollett added that he often wonders if the people he meets “doesn’t think about anything.”
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Special Forces: World’s toughest Test Season 4 Premiere Thursday, September 25th at 9pm (FOX on ET/PT/PT).
