After consulting with his attorneys and crisis management team, Jussie Smollett told Chicago police that he has an alleged drug problem, a move which could be used as a mitigating factor to get his sentence reduced, according to TMZ.
Smollett divulged his ‘drug problem’ after turning himself in Thursday morning on charges that he filed a police report for a Jan. 29 hate crime hoax he allegedly paid to associates to act out.
Smollett fingered Abimbola “Abel” Osundario – one of the two brothers the ‘Empire’ star allegedly paid $3,500 to beat him up – as his drug dealer, selling him ‘Molly’ several times since the spring of 2018 according to text messages.
Police say Smollett text messaged Osundario asking for the drug – a street name for ecstacy.
Word of Smollett’s drug problem comes as TVLine reports ‘Empire‘ producers are considering bringing in a new actor to play the role of Jamal. Co-creator Lee Daniels – who reportedly loosely based the character on himself, is said to be a big fan of the idea.
20th Century Fox said on Friday that while they will wait for the legal process to play out, they “have decided to remove the role of ‘Jamal’ from the final two episodes of the season.”
Smollett was arrested early Thursday after turning himself in on a felony criminal charge of disorderly conduct for filing a false police report in connection with the hate crime ‘attack.’
And in a sign that the left has finally accepted the situation, the Daily Show mocked the Smollett situation on Friday:
Coming this fall… The story of a poorly staged hate crime that rocked a nation: Jussie’s Lie pic.twitter.com/iGXmETn8m6
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) February 22, 2019
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