Despite a recent report that revealed Empire star Terrence Howard had a meltdown on set of the hit show after Jussie Smollett was arrested for allegedly staging his attack, Howard has come forward to share support for his former co-star with an Instagram post.
On Sunday (February 24), Howard posted a video of Smollett holding and playing with an infant. "All your lil homies got you…We love the hell outta you," he captioned the clip. Unsurprisingly, the clip garnered a fair amount of criticism, but the Hollywood heavyweight was quick to respond to the fuss. "Sorry you feel that way but that’s the only Jussie I know,” he told one fan. “The Jussie I know could never even conceive of something so unconscious and ugly. His innocence or judgment is not for any of us to decide. Stay in your lane and my lane is empathy and love and compassion for someone I've called my son for five years. It's God's job to judge and it’s ours to love and hope, especially for those that we claim to have loved."
Howard's tune is certainly a different one from his reported on-set meltdown on Thursday after Smollett turned himself into Chicago PD. TMZ reported that Howard was so upset that he refused to leave his trailer for most of the day. Sources revealed that the actor never fully believed his former co-star's story and grilled him periodically as the holes began to emerge. When he confronted the star, Howard yelled at him to come clean, but, as you know, none of that happened when Smollett addressed the cast and crew in a meeting that Howard did not attend.
On Friday (February 22), the producers of the Fox show announced to the Associated Press that Smollett's character, Jamal Lyon, will not appear in the final two episodes of the current season "to avoid further disruption on set." In a statement, executive producers Lee Daniels, Danny Strong, Brett Mahoney, Brian Grazer, Sanaa Hamri, Francie Calfo and Dennis Hammer broke their silence, saying, "While these allegations are very disturbing, we are placing our trust in the legal system as the process plays out. We are also aware of the effects of this process on the cast and crew members who work on our show and to avoid further disruption on set, we have decided to remove the role of ‘Jamal’ from the final two episodes of the season."
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