Jussie Smollett

Jussie Smollett is an American actor, filmmaker, and singer best known for playing Jamal Lyon -- a gay R&B singer navigating his family's hip-hop empire and his own coming out -- on Empire (2015). His portrayal of a gay Black man in a mainstream hip-hop drama was celebrated for bringing queer Black identity to a broad primetime audience. He came out as gay in a 2015 interview, becoming one of the few Black male actors on a major network drama to be openly gay while playing a gay character. He made his feature directorial debut with B-Boy Blues (2021), an adaptation of James Earl Hardy's 1994 gay novel about a romance between a journalist and a bike messenger in 1990s New York, and has also released music, including his 2018 debut album Sum of My Music. His acting career was significantly disrupted by legal controversies beginning in 2019.