The actor was reportedly cut over his alleged hate crime scandal.
Jussie Smollett has lost a starring role in a forthcoming Broadway play in the wake of his hate crime scandal. The actor was reportedly nipped from the Broadway reboot of the Tony-winning play, Take Me Out, the Daily Mail reports.
Smollett was originally cast to play the main character Darren Lemming, an interracial baseball player who comes out a gay at the height of his career. Ironically, the character also suffers a racial and homophobic attack by a teammate.
The actor previously read for the role only one day before his alleged attack in Chicago in Jan. 2019. A source close to Broadway told the British newspaper that Smollett and his co-star Zachary Quinto’s castings were going to be announced in Mar. 2019, but “everything shifted” after Smollett was arrested and charged on the suspicion of staging his own hate crime and stalling a police investigation.
Smollett’s disorderly conduct case has since been dropped, but the city of Chicago is suing the actor for $130,000 for the time wasted on his extensive investigation. Jussie didn’t appear in the last two episodes of Empire’s fifth season, but he is expected to return to the hit Fox series in the upcoming season.
This article originally appeared in VIBE.
