Lee Daniels has built a career on telling stories built around Black communities, from Precious to The Butler to the game-changing TV drama Empire, and his latest feature effort The Deliverance perhaps surprisingly shares a spot on both the slate of upcoming horror movies and upcoming Netflix movies. You won’t see former Jamal Lyon portrayer Jussie Smollett amongst those cast members, but the Oscar-nominated director would apparently be open to working with the controversial actor again.
Daniels popped by the Breakfast Club radio show to promote his new movie with Charlamagne tha God and Jess Hilarious, and when asked what their relationship is like now, five years after Smollet’s hate crime claims were revealed to be fabricated, leading to his arrest for filing false charges. Rather than dodging the question, the director shared his honest thoughts about the situation, saying:
We text each other. He has a movie that I think is coming out; I haven’t seen it yet. Look, it’s complicated. It’s so complicated. Life is so complicated. . . . That whole situation is complicated. And I still don’t know what to believe. Honestly, I don’t know what to believe. People say he did do it, he didn’t do it. God bless him on his journey.
Jussie Smollett made waves as a young actor with The Mighty Ducks and the sitcom On Our Own, but it was Lee Daniels and Empire that helped turn him into a star celebrity with a burgeoning music career. Of course, much of that success was thrown out the window in the wake of Smollett’s arrest and ensuing legal issues, with Jamal being fired from Empire at the tail end of its fifth season.
When asked if he would consider working with Smollett again, Lee Daniels was certainly open to the idea, to the point that he would make that casting decision himself. As he put it:
I’ll work with him again. Yeah, I would cast him. He’s a son to me. And he also represented the movement that I tried to start. Which I didn’t even know I was starting. I was so busy worried about Cookie’s hat and the music that we were playing. This was before Insecure, this was before Black Panther — we started that. . . . But I was so worried about getting everything right — is the phone right here on the set? — that I didn’t know what was happening in the zeitgeist.
While Charlamagne tha God didn’t talk too much about his own opinions of Smollett in the moment, the host pointed out that his questions to the filmmaker were more about Hollywood rarely giving scandalized Black actors a second chance when compared to white actors. He and Jess gave Daniels props for being an inspiration to others in that way.
At the moment, Smollett isn’t exactly in hiding or anything. He returned to a subdued spotlight in 2022 with his directorial debut B-Boy Blues, which he also wrote, and and promoted at the BET Awards while talking about attempting a comeback.
Smollet’s latest project, which he directed and co-wrote with Jerrell Chesney, is the drama The Lost Holliday. He got back in front of the camera for this one, as he co-stars opposite fellow Empire vet Vivica A. Fox. It’s set to hit the 2024 movie schedule in a limited capacity on September 27.
Meanwhile, Lee Daniels’ The Deliverance is in its own limited run, and will be available to stream with a Netflix subscription on Thursday, August 30.
