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Actor Jussie Smollett is officially returning to the FOX network, where he’ll star in an upcoming competition show in his first appearance on the network since his infamously alleged staged attack.
What is Jussie Smollett appearing in?
Smollett will be one of 18 celebrities appearing on the show Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test, which begins airing on September 25, 2025. The series will see celebrities taking on various challenges that mirror that of various military special forces training.
Alongside Smollett, Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test will also feature Kody Brown (Sister Wives), Brittany Cartwright (The Valley), Randall Cobb (former NFL player), Eric Decker (former NFL player), Jesse James Decker (country music star), Andrew East (former NFL player), Shawn Johnson East (gold medal Olympian), Mark Estes (internet personality), Gia Giudice and Teresa Giudice (The Real Housewives of New Jersey), Chanel Iman (model), Brianna LaPaglia (internet personality), Johnny Manziel (former NFL player), Eva Marcille (model and actress), Ravi V. Patel (Animal Control), Christie Pearce Rampone (World Cup winning soccer player), and Nick Young (former NBA player).
Smollett previously starred on Fox’s music drama Empire for five years, from 2015-19. During his breakout role as Jamal Lyon, Smollett was infamously involved in an incident in which he claimed that two Black men attacked him and yelled homophobic slurs at him in Chicago. Afterward, the two men claimed that Smollett had actually paid them to stage the attack, and Smollett was subsequently charged with filing a false police report.
Charges were initially dropped, and Smollett ended up paying a fine and doing community service. However, in 2020, he was re-indicted by a special prosecutor, and convicted of five counts of felony disorderly conduct related to filing false reports in 2021. He then served six days in jail before being released. In 2024, the Illinois Supreme Court overturned his conviction, ruling that the second set of charges violated Smollett’s due process rights.
For his part, Smollett maintains that he never staged the attack and did not have any hand in it happening. Since the incident, Smollett has not appeared in many projects, but will be the focus of an upcoming documentary, The Truth About Jussie Smollett?, that premieres on August 22, 2025, on Netflix.
