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The Untold Truth Of The Smollett Family

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Six siblings, one Chicago-raised household, and one national headline that swallowed the rest of their résumés.

The Smollett name is now shorthand for a single 2019 scandal, but there are six siblings under that roof, and five of them built careers in entertainment long before “Empire” made Jussie a household name. Jake, Jazz, Jussie, Jurnee, Jocqui, and JoJo grew up moving across the country 13 times with parents who raised them on activism, cooking, and the arts. Their first real break came together, as a family, on network television in 1994 — years before any courtroom drama entered the picture.

• All six siblings starred together as orphaned kids on the short-lived 1994 ABC sitcom “On Our Own,” a breakthrough that followed Jurnee’s earlier child role on “Full House.”
• Jurnee went on to build the family’s most decorated acting résumé — “Eve’s Bayou,” Black Canary in “Birds of Prey,” and Letitia Lewis on HBO’s “Lovecraft Country” — while Jake and Jazz run food and lifestyle ventures and Jocqui left show business entirely for a data analytics job at Snowflake.
• As of December 8, 2021, Jussie Smollett is standing trial in Cook County on felony disorderly conduct charges after jury selection concluded on November 29, 2021, stemming from the January 2019 hate crime he reported and that investigators allege he staged.

A Household Built on Activism and the Arts

Joel and Janet Smollett met during a civil rights campaign, and that background shaped how they raised their six kids. The family bounced between coasts across 13 moves, with cooking and performance treated as everyday skills rather than hobbies. That mix — organizing, food, and the arts — shows up in nearly every sibling’s adult career, from Jake’s kitchen work to Jussie’s activism-heavy public persona.

From ‘On Our Own’ to Five Different Paths

The Smolletts’ first big collective credit was “On Our Own,” the 1994 ABC sitcom in which all six played orphaned siblings raising themselves. It didn’t last long on the network schedule, but it put every one of them in front of cameras at once, building on the head start Jurnee had already gotten as a young child actor on “Full House.” From that shared starting point, the paths split fast — one sister became a leading actress, one brother became a chef, one became a corporate data analyst, and one became the face of a network drama and, later, a courtroom.

Jurnee’s Rise to Leading Lady

Jurnee Smollett is the sibling with the deepest filmography, moving from “Eve’s Bayou” through a run of prestige and blockbuster work that includes playing Black Canary in “Birds of Prey” and Letitia Lewis on HBO’s “Lovecraft Country.” That trajectory — child actor to genre lead to awards-season presence — makes her the clearest example of the family’s early “On Our Own” exposure paying off decades later.

The Family Business: Food, Design and One Big Exit

Jake Smollett turned the family’s kitchen habits into a career, hosting culinary and woodworking segments and teaming with sister Jazz on the CLEO TV show “Living By Design.” Before that, the pair fronted the 2016 Food Network series “Smollett Eats” and co-wrote the 2018 cookbook “The Family Table” with their siblings. Jocqui took the opposite route entirely, earning dual degrees in global economics and mathematics before leaving entertainment altogether for a corporate data analytics role at Snowflake — arguably the family’s biggest departure from the spotlight.

The Jussie Smollett Case and the Cook County Trial

Jussie Smollett’s fame as Jamal Lyon on Fox’s “Empire” made him the family’s most recognizable member well before January 2019, when he reported being the victim of a racist and homophobic attack in Chicago. Investigators later alleged he staged the assault with brothers Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, leading to felony disorderly conduct charges — a case that, unlike some of the other controversial celebrity moments of 2021, has stretched on for nearly three years without resolution.

Jury selection wrapped on November 29, 2021 — the opening move in a Cook County trial built entirely around whether Jussie Smollett paid two brothers to fake his own hate crime.

Through it all, the rest of the Smolletts have stayed publicly united behind their brother, defending his character even as the legal process dragged into a full criminal trial. It’s a very different kind of family loyalty test than the ones that show up in other celebrity legal sagas, mostly because the Smolletts built their public identity as a unit long before any of this started.

The trial was still underway in Cook County as of December 8, 2021, with prosecutors leaning on testimony from the Osundairo brothers to make their case — the same two men Jussie’s family has spent nearly three years insisting were lying.