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Smollett Hoped for a Bigger Salary, but Fake 'Attack' Just Landed Him in the Unemployment Line

By Ryan Ledendecker June 5, 2019 at 1:17pm

Back in February, the Chicago Police Department stated that the motivation behind Jussie Smollett’s staged hate crime was to collect a bigger paycheck for his role on the TV show “Empire,” according to the Washington Examiner.

After months of waiting to see if Smollett’s plot to collect an increased salary would come to fruition, a verdict has finally been reached.

Smollett won’t be getting a bigger paycheck — and he certainly won’t be returning to “Empire.”

Basically, everything that could have gone wrong for the Hollywood actor did go wrong.

The news comes directly from “Empire” co-creator Lee Daniels, who refuted an inaccurate report about “Empire” writers gearing up to have Smollett back for the show’s final season.

“Jussie will NOT be returning to Empire,” Daniels tweeted.

@Variety @JoeOtterson This is not factual. Jussie will NOT be returning to Empire. -LD

— lee daniels (@leedanielsent) June 4, 2019

Smollett’s embarrassing attempt to play the victim failed in miserable fashion. The once-successful network television star is unemployed, and his fan base will likely diminish as a result.

Are you glad Jussie Smollett won't be getting his job back?

Huff Post reported that Smollett was earning around $65,000 per episode in the last season in which he appeared. With 18 episodes in a season, he took home a cool $1.17 million. Life would be pretty great for anyone earning that amount of money.

But that just wasn’t good enough for Smollett.

Smollett — who is black and openly gay — according to Chicago police felt compelled to stage a fake hate crime in which he claimed two white, homophobic racists beat him, tied a noose around him and doused him in bleach on a freezing night.

After the Chicago Police Department invested vast resources in its investigation and learned the truth about Smollett, its members were unhappy to say the least.

“’Empire’ actor Jussie took advantage of the pain and racism to promote his own career,” Eddie Johnson, superintendent of the CPD, said in February. “I am left hanging my head and asking ‘Why?’ Why would anyone, especially an African American man, use the symbolism of a noose to make false accusations?”

Smollett’s entire debacle is the epitome of “greed” — the act of collecting a few extra bucks at the expense of other people.

In the end, he reaped what he had sown.

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