Jussie Smollett Talks ‘MAGA’ Attack on ‘GMA’: “I Noticed the Rope Around My Neck and Started Screaming”

Two weeks after Jussie Smollett was brutally attacked in a reported hate crime, the Empire star is speaking out. In a new interview with Good Morning America‘s Robin Roberts, Smollett discussed the incident, as well as the many “doubters” who have questioned his story. The actor told Roberts that he believes the incident was a racial and homophobic attack — he recalled his attackers yelling, “F*cking Empire n*****” and “This is MAGA country, n*****” — and he was adamant that people “would have supported [him] much more” if he had been attacked by “a Muslim, or a Mexican, or someone black” rather than white men.

Smollett told GMA that he was attacked on January 29 at 2 a.m. as he was leaving a restaurant in Chicago. He recalled that the “masked” attackers caught his attention by yelling racial and homophobic slurs at him, and when he confronted them, one said, “This MAGA country, n*****” and punched him in the face. The men began “tussling,” and after a while, Smollett’s attackers ran away. “Then I looked down, and I see that there’s a rope around my neck,” he told Roberts of the encounter. “I noticed the rope around my neck and I started screaming. I said, ‘There’s a fucking rope around my neck.'”

Immediately after news broke of Smollett’s attack, critics began doubting his story. “For me, the main thing was the idea that I somehow switched up my story, you know? And that somehow maybe I added a little extra trinket, you know, of the MAGA thing,” said Smollett. “I didn’t need to add anything like that. They called me a f*****, they called me a n*****. There’s no which way you cut it. I don’t need some MAGA hat as the cherry on top of some racist sundae,” he added, referencing reports that his attackers were wearing MAGA hats at the time of the incident.

“I have to acknowledge the lies, and the hate. And it feels like if I had said it was a Muslim, or a Mexican, or someone black, I feel like the doubters would have supported me much more. A lot more,” the Empire star told Roberts. “And that says a lot about the place that we are in our country right now.” He added, “It’s not necessarily that you don’t believe that this is the truth, you don’t even want to see the truth.”

Watch portions of Smollett’s GMA interview above. You can watch his interview in its entirety on ABC.