Jussie Smollett is returning to Fox, over six years after he left the network’s show Empire amid controversy over an allegedly staged hate crime attack.
The 43-year-old actor and singer has been announced as one of the competitors on Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test, which will premiere on September 25.
He previously starred on music drama Empire from 2015 to 2019. He left the show after claiming that two men assaulted him, spouted racial and homophobic slurs, and tossed a noose around his neck in downtown Chicago, while he was filming the television show.
The two men later claimed that Smollett had hired them to stage the attack, something the actor has always denied. He was charged with filing a false police report and his character was written out of the final season of Empire.
When the case went to trial, testimony alleged Smollett had paid $3,500 to two men he knew from Empire to carry out the attack. Prosecutors said he told them what slurs to shout and to yell that Smollett was in “MAGA country,” a reference to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign slogan.
Prosecutors alleged the actor staged the attack because he was unhappy with the studio’s response to hate mail he received while filming Empire.
In his own testimony Smollett said that “there was no hoax” and that he was the victim of a hate crime in his downtown Chicago neighborhood. He has always maintained his innocence.
Despite this, a jury convicted him of five counts of disorderly conduct in 2021. He was sentenced to 150 days in jail — six of which he served before he was freed pending appeal — 30 months of probation and ordered to pay about $130,000 in restitution. The Illinois Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 2024 because of a non-prosecution agreement he had entered into with the Cook County attorney’s office.
He participated in a Netflix documentary titled The Truth About Jussie Smollett? that is set to air on August 22.
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In Special Forces, Smollett will be one of 18 celebrities who will take part in challenges based on military special forces training. The other stars include Kody Brown (from TLC’s Sister Wives), Brittany Cartwright (from Bravo’s The Valley), former NFL player Randall Cobb, former NFL player Eric Decker, country music artist Jessie James Decker, former NFL player Andrew East, gold medal-winning Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson East, and internet personality Mark Estes.
The cast will be completed by Gia Giudice and Teresa Giudice from The Real Housewives of New Jersey, model Chanel Iman, internet personality Brianna LaPaglia (known as Brianna Chickenfry), former NFL player Johnny Manziel, model Eva Marcille, Animal Control star Ravi V. Patel, World Cup-winning soccer player Christie Pearce Rampone and former NBA player Nick Young.
