The Case That Divided America: A Documentary About Jussie Smollett Is Coming

Netflix is getting ready to release a new documentary that dives into one of the most talked-about scandals in recent American pop culture, the Jussie Smollett case. Titled The Truth About Jussie Smollett?, the documentary is set to premiere on August 22.

The film will look back at what happened in 2019, when Smollett claimed he was the victim of a hate crime in Chicago. At the time, the story grabbed headlines everywhere. According to Smollett, two men attacked him late at night, yelled racist and homophobic slurs, poured a chemical on him, and even tied a rope around his neck.

The reaction was immediate, with huge support pouring in from celebrities and politicians. People like Viola Davis and Shonda Rhimes spoke out on social media, and politicians like Kamala Harris and Cory Booker called the attack an attempted modern-day lynching.

But the story quickly took a strange turn. Chicago police later identified the two men in surveillance footage as brothers from Nigeria, both of whom had worked as extras on Smollett’s TV show Empire. Investigators eventually claimed Smollett had paid them $3,500 to stage the whole thing.

What followed was a messy legal back-and-forth. At first, Smollett was hit with 16 felony charges, but those were dropped. Then a year later, he was charged again. In 2021, he went to trial and was convicted on five counts of disorderly conduct. He got probation, a short jail sentence, and had to pay more than $120,000 in fines.

In 2024, that conviction was overturned, with the Illinois Supreme Court saying the second prosecution violated his rights. In 2025, Smollett settled with the City of Chicago, but he still insists he didn’t fake the attack.

Netflix says the documentary will be 90 minutes long and include interviews with police officers, lawyers, journalists, and investigators, many of whom claim they’ve got new evidence. The project comes from director Gagan Rehill and RAW, the same team behind Netflix hits like Don’t F**k with Cats and The Tinder Swindler. Tom Sheahan and Tim Wardle are the executive producers.

In a statement, Rehill said he wanted the film to explore both sides of the story. “This story is a thrilling ride, and we were lucky enough to have access to the key players,” he said. “I wanted this documentary to balance their competing narratives and to also use their compelling, colorful testimonies to thread the light and shade of the story through the film.”

He also said the story reflects a bigger shift in culture during that time. “Much more than that, I wanted this film to speak to 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 — when we began to lack a common singular truth.”

Whether it clears things up or stirs things up even more, The Truth About Jussie Smollett? is definitely going to get people talking again.

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