Jussie Smollett Apologizes To Crew Of “Empire” But He’s Still Being Written Out Of The Rest Of The Season
Jussie Smollett is beginning his fast descent towards rock bottom after the hate crime he allegedly staged against himself has begun to unravel. In less than a month, Jussie went from heartfelt victim to ridiculously stupid criminal. He was charged with a felony for all the shenanigans and now his legal dramas are hitting him hard at work as Jussie is getting axed from the rest of this season of Empire.
TMZ is reporting that Jussie was trying really hard to apologize to the people he works with day in and day out on the set of Empire. After his arrest, which caused his scenes on Thursday to be postponed, Jussie went to set and was “very emotional” as he apologized to his co-workers and asserted his innocence:
“I’m sorry I’ve put you all through this and not answered any calls. I wanted to say I’m sorry and, you know me, I would never do this to any of you, you are my family. I swear to God, I did not do this.”
Sources say it was obvious Jussie was crying since that’s what you do when your whole life is crumbling around you, and it’s either because the Chicago Police are pulling off THE most historic frame-job in the history of frame-jobs, or you literally just screwed your whole life up over greed for a pay raise. Producers told Jussie to come back when his eyes weren’t so puffy so he left and eventually came back to finish filming.
TMZ also says that some members of the cast and crew want Jussie out, and say he has “damaged the show’s image” and are worried that if he continues working it will only be worse. They are “fucking furious” and want the people over at Fox to fire his ass if he doesn’t quit from shame. Remember when they all had to get armed security because of this? Imagine thinking you were in danger of an attack and it was just your co-worker trying to get paid? hat’s way worse than eating a lunch from the fridge that isn’t yours.
Some of the cast are keeping their fingers crossed that this is a set-up because they “can’t fathom him pulling off a hoax like this”. Not everyone agrees, and TMZ has heard that Jussie had to change his phone number because some pissed of cast members kept blowing it up with angry messages.
Well, Deadline is saying that the Anti-Jussie part of the cast can breathe a sigh of relief, because he has been cut from the rest of Empire‘s season. The producers–Lee Daniels, Francie Calfo, Danny Strong, Brian Grazer, Sanaa Hamri, Dennis Hammer and Brett Mahoney–got together and put out a statement saying Jussie is out:
“The events of the past few weeks have been incredibly emotional for all of us… Jussie has been an important member of our Empire family for the past five years and we care about him deeply… While these allegations are very disturbing, we are placing our trust in the legal system as the process plays out. We are also aware of the effects of this process on the cast and crew members who work on our show and to avoid further disruption on set, we have decided to remove the role of ‘Jamal’ from the final two episodes of the season.”
Oof. Girl. Jussie… this a mess. This a real mess. What you’ve got to do is get into damage control mode. Find your friends. Earn some good favor. Call up Taraji P. Henson and hope that she’s one of the cast members who still likes you. She went to bat for R. Kelly and she don’t even know him! Maybe you can convince her to send out a bad-taste tweet about how you’re not that bad a guy compared to mass murderers or terrorists?
Pic: Wenn.com