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      Jussie Smollett Timeline: A Case With Twists and Turns

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      The case began in 2019 when the actor reported that he had been the victim of a racist and homophobic attack, and led to a trial in which he was accused of staging the attack himself.Nearly three years have passed since the actor Jussie Smollett reported that he had been the victim of a racist and homophobic attack in Chicago. The police initially investigated the incident as a possible hate crime, then accused Mr. Smollett of staging the attack himself. Charges were filed against Mr. Smollett, then dropped. A special prosecutor was appointed and charges were filed again, leading to his trial on charges of disorderly conduct for making a false report to the police.Here’s a timeline of how we got here.Jan. 29, 2019: Mr. Smollett, who is Black and gay, tells the police that at about 2 a.m., two masked men, one of whom he believed to be white, attacked him on the 300 block of East Lower North Water Street in downtown Chicago. The assailants, according to Mr. Smollett, hurled homophobic and racial slurs at him, put a rope around his neck and poured a chemical substance on him.Mr. Smollett says he went home and a close associate of his reported the incident to the police 40 minutes after it happened. Anthony Guglielmi, the chief spokesman for the Chicago Police Department, later told The Chicago Sun-Times that Mr. Smollett had been hesitant to call the police because of his status as a public figure.Law enforcement officials say they are treating the incident “as a possible hate crime.” At a follow-up visit by investigators, Mr. Smollett says the attackers mentioned “MAGA country,” a reference to the campaign slogan of former President Donald J. Trump.Celebrities, politicians and advocacy groups offer their support to Mr. Smollett. Fox, the network on which “Empire” airs, issues a statement saying the “entire studio, network and production stands united in the face of any despicable act of violence and hate.”Detectives comb through surveillance camera recordings but say they can’t find images of the attack.Jan. 30: Investigators announce the first possible break in the case: A surveillance image shows “potential persons of interest wanted for questioning” in connection to the case. The images are of two men with their backs to the camera.At this point, the F.B.I. is already investigating a threatening letter sent to Mr. Smollett at the “Empire” production offices in Chicago the week before.Jan. 31: Mr. Trump is asked about the incident in the Oval Office. He refers to it as “horrible” and added that it “doesn’t get worse.”The Smollett family releases a statement: “Jussie was the victim of a violent and unprovoked attack. We want to be clear, this was a racial and homophobic hate crime. Jussie has told the police everything from the very beginning. His story has never changed, and we are hopeful they will find these men and bring them to justice.”Feb. 1: Mr. Smollett releases his first public statement through his publicist. It says: “Let me start by saying that I’m OK. My body is strong but my soul is stronger. More importantly, I want to say thank you. The outpouring of love and support from my village has meant more than I will ever be able to truly put into words.”Acknowledging some skepticism about his story on social media, Mr. Smollett adds, “I am working with authorities and have been 100 percent factual and consistent on every level. Despite my frustrations and deep concern with certain inaccuracies and misrepresentations that have been spread, I still believe that justice will be served.”The Chicago police superintendent, Eddie T. Johnson, says in an interview with a local television station: “We have to remember, he’s a victim. You know, so we have to treat it like he’s a victim. We have no reason to think that he’s not being genuine with us.”Feb. 2: Mr. Smollett appears in public for the first time since he reported the attack, performing a concert in West Hollywood.“I have so many words on my heart that I want to say, but the most important thing I can say is, thank you so much, and that I’m OK,” Mr. Smollett tells the crowd.Feb. 4: The Chicago police say the people of interest have not been identified yet but they are continuing to follow up on leads.Feb. 11: The department reacts to phone records that Mr. Smollett turned over to investigators. The police had asked Mr. Smollett for access to his phone because he had been in conversation with his manager when the incident occurred. Mr. Smollett provides the police with redacted records that they say “do not meet the burden for a criminal investigation.”Feb. 13: Two brothers of Nigerian descent, Olabinjo and Abimbola Osundairo, are detained by the authorities after a flight back home to Chicago from Nigeria. Police officers raid their home and, according to CBS Chicago, remove items including an “Empire” script and two hats.Feb. 14: Mr. Smollett gives his first interview about the incident to “Good Morning America,” where he is adamant that he is telling the truth.“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,” Mr. Smollett tells ABC’s Robin Roberts. “A lot more.”He also says he is convinced that the men in the surveillance images were his attackers.“Because I was there,” Mr. Smollett says. “For me, when that was released, I was like, ‘OK, we’re getting somewhere.’ I don’t have any doubt in my mind that that’s them. Never did.”The Chicago police reveal publicly that at least one of the men detained has appeared as an extra on “Empire.” The department also says they “are not yet suspects.” Their lawyer, Gloria Schmidt, tells CBS Chicago: “They’re really baffled why they are people of interest. They really don’t understand how they even got information that linked them to this horrific crime. But they’re not guilty of it. They know that the evidence is going to prove them innocent. They send their best to Jussie.”The local news media releases its first reports that investigators are beginning to look at the possibility that this is a hoax, something the Chicago police dispute publicly.Feb. 15: In a whirlwind day, the detained brothers are identified as potential suspects by police, but that night are released without being charged. Investigators announce they are no longer considered suspects but do not say why.Feb. 16: The police say they are seeking to speak with Mr. Smollett again. Media outlets, including CNN, report that the two men have told investigators they were paid to take part in a hoax. Mr. Guglielmi says in a statement, “We can confirm that the information received from the individuals questioned by police earlier in the ‘Empire’ case has in fact shifted the trajectory of the investigation.”Lawyers for Mr. Smollett release a statement saying, “As a victim of a hate crime who has cooperated with the police investigation, Jussie Smollett is angered and devastated by recent reports that the perpetrators are individuals he is familiar with.”It added: “One of these purported suspects was Jussie’s personal trainer who he hired to ready him physically for a music video. It is impossible to believe that this person could have played a role in the crime against Jussie or would falsely claim Jussie’s complicity.”The lawyers say that Mr. Smollett will “continue to cooperate” and that they “have no inclination to respond to ‘unnamed’ sources inside of the investigation.”Feb. 20: Fox releases a statement in support of Mr. Smollett amid reports that his role was being reduced on “Empire.” Later in the day, the Chicago police announce that they consider Mr. Smollett a suspect in the filing of a false report.Understand the Jussie Smollett TrialCard 1 of 5A staged hate crime? More

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      Pastor Who Appeared in Drag on HBO's 'We're Here' Leaves Church

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      A United Methodist Church pastor in Indiana stepped down after performing in drag and speaking about inclusion on the show “We’re Here.”When Pastor Craig Duke stepped onstage in a small town in southern Indiana, wearing a cotton-candy-pink wig and a sparkly dress under his white robe, he knew his performance would rile some members of his congregation.He did not, however, expect his drag debut to bring an end to his role leading Newburgh United Methodist Church in a suburb of Evansville.Mr. Duke’s performance was part of the unscripted HBO show “We’re Here,” which documents L.G.B.T.Q. people and their allies in small towns who put together a drag show, led by three drag all-stars.The episode that featured the pastor premiered in early November and in it, he explained that he appeared on the show so he could be “empathetic, not just sympathetic” to the community’s gay members. Three weeks later, the church announced that he had been “relieved from pastoral duties.”In an interview this week, Mr. Duke said he had received enough critical feedback since the show aired to convince him he could not continue leading the church, which he said had about 400 congregants. He said that he was hurt by the negative responses but that he had also received hundreds of messages of support.“I experienced as much love and acceptance, and dare I say more, within the drag culture and the L.G.B.T.Q. community than most people would experience within the settings of the church,” Mr. Duke said. “Not one person questioned what I was doing there; it was complete acceptance.”Mr. Duke last preached on Nov. 14, a week after his episode aired. A local church leader said in a letter to the congregation dated Nov. 26 that Mr. Duke would be relieved from his duties on Dec. 1.The superintendent of the south and southwest district of the Indiana United Methodist Church, the Rev. Mitch Gieselman, wrote in the letter that he had received numerous messages both supporting and criticizing Mr. Duke’s actions.Mr. Gieselman said that the pastor had not resigned or been fired, but that his salary had been significantly reduced and he and his family would have to move out of the parsonage by Feb. 28.“While there is a diversity of opinion regarding the moral implications of Rev. Duke’s actions, he has not been found to have committed any chargeable offense or other violation of the United Methodist Book of Discipline,” Mr. Gieselman wrote.The pastor’s supporters created an online fund-raiser, which had raised more than $56,000 as of Wednesday morning. He said any money raised over the $30,000 goal set to help his family would go toward creating a new faith community in town that he hopes is more inclusive.Pastor Craig Duke, middle left, and the drag queen Eureka O’Hara, middle right, performed at an event after Mr. Duke’s drag transformation on the HBO series.Johnnie Ingram/ HBOThe public split in this congregation came during a stalemate about rights for L.G.B.T.Q. members of the United Methodist Church, which has nearly 13 million members worldwide. Roughly half of them are in the United States.Ahead of a 2020 meeting of global delegates, a group of church leaders introduced a proposal to split the church, citing “fundamental differences” over same-sex marriage. The traditionalists signed a letter declaring that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” But the debate on the proposal has been delayed for nearly two years because of the coronavirus pandemic.The proposal, which would create a denomination that continues to ban same-sex marriage and the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy, is scheduled to be debated at the church’s general conference in August 2022.The interim pastor at Newburgh United Methodist Church, the Rev. Mark Dicken, said the Methodist church had “regrettably” been fighting over this issue for more than 40 years.“Very regrettably, the extremely conservative wing of the United Methodist Church has crammed through rather draconian provisions in their attempt to control clergy and their ministry to L.G.B.T.Q. people,” Mr. Dicken said.Mr. Dicken worked at the church in Newburgh from 2004 to 2011 and came out of retirement to lead the congregation again.“The tribalism and polarization that’s going on in our culture, particularly in our political culture, has filtered down into the church,” he said.In the HBO show, which was nominated for an Emmy in 2020, three drag stars, Shangela, Bob the Drag Queen and Eureka O’Hara, confront these divisions while mentoring people for the show-ending drag performance. All three posted messages of support for Mr. Duke after the news about him leaving his position became public.O’Hara, who was the pastor’s drag mother or mentor, said on Twitter: “Craig is an amazing person and deserves the same love that he shares with everyone around him.”The pastor, who is straight and described himself as “heteronormative,” was nominated to be featured in the show by the Evansville Pride group. He said he had never heard of the show but decided to participate to share a message of God’s unconditional love and to support his daughter, who identifies as pansexual. He used Joan of Arc O’Hara as his drag name.He said the negative response from some members of the congregation was especially painful because of the way it hurt his daughter. But his wife and the rest of his family are “sticking together,” he said, and they have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support.He said he was grateful for his experience in drag.“It was real, it wasn’t vaudeville, it was powerful, as the words they taught me, it was fierce, it was authentic,” Mr. Duke said. More

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      Jussie Smollett Tells Jury He Did Not Direct a Fake Attack on Himself

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      The actor, who is accused of asking two brothers to mildly attack him, and then reporting it as a hate crime, took the stand at his criminal trial on charges related to the 2019 assault.Jussie Smollett took the stand on Monday in an effort to convince a Chicago jury that he did not orchestrate a racist and homophobic hate crime against himself but, instead, was the victim of both a real attack and the police’s rush to judgment in charging him.Mr. Smollett, 39, submitted himself to questioning in his own trial to rebut the testimony of two key witnesses, Abimbola Osundairo and Olabinjo Osundairo, brothers who told the court last week that Mr. Smollett had instructed them in detail on how to attack him.The Osundairo brothers said Mr. Smollett took them through a “dry run” of the attack on the day before it was supposed to occur in January 2019 and asked one of them to bruise him without inflicting real injuries while the other put a rope around his neck and poured bleach on him.Prosecutors have argued that Mr. Smollett staged the attack because he was upset that the show on which he starred, the Fox hip-hop drama “Empire,” did not take seriously a threatening letter he had received at the studio.But Mr. Smollett sought to undercut the prosecution’s explanation, testifying that he had refused the studio’s offer of additional security, which would have driven him each day from his home to the set.“I’m a grown man,” Mr. Smollett said. “I don’t need to be driven around like Miss Daisy.”He also supported the defense contention that the brothers attacked him so that he might be scared enough to hire them as his private security. Mr. Smollett said that Abimbola Osundairo was persistent in trying to act as his bodyguard, at times behaving when they went out in ways that reminded him of the “Secret Service.”And Mr. Smollett’s version of what happened on Jan. 25, 2019, just days before the attack, when the prosecution says Mr. Smollett asked Abimbola Osundairo for help “on the low,” was completely different. He was seeking a meeting, not to plan his own assault, but to arrange to get an herbal steroid from Nigeria that helps people lose body fat and is illegal in the United States.“At any point in time did you talk to him about some hoax?” Mr. Smollett’s lawyer, Nenye Uche, asked.“No,” Mr. Smollett replied.During their car ride later, they did not plan the attack, as the prosecution argued, but smoked marijuana, Mr. Smollett said.“We drove around and smoked and that was that,” he testified.Olabinjo Osundairo, at the courthouse, where he testified Thursday that Mr. Smollett had orchestrated the attack.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressAbimbola Osundairo, Olabinjo’s brother, told the court last week that Mr. Smollett was upset that a threatening letter he received had not been taken more seriously.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressMr. Smollett also sought early in his testimony to indicate just how happy he had been with his role on “Empire,” and, when asked directly, said he had no problem with Fox. Instead Mr. Smollett, who is gay, testified that it had been a blessing to win the role of Jamal Lyon, a gay singer-songwriter, that so closely mirrored his identity and to eventually earn $100,000 per episode.“I had never seen a gay man — let alone a gay Black man — portrayed ever,” Mr. Smollett said. “I really, really wanted to do it.”Over the course of the trial, prosecutors have sought to paint a picture of the attack as a bid for publicity, pointing to how, days before the attack, Mr. Smollett had received the letter at the studio for “Empire.” It included a red stick figure hanging from a noose, a homophobic slur and the acronym “MAGA,” said Daniel K. Webb, the special prosecutor in the case, in the courtroom last week.“He devised this fake hate crime to take place so that the ‘Empire’ studio would take this more seriously,” Mr. Webb said, “because this fake hate crime would get media attention.”But the showrunner for “Empire” at the time, Brett Mahoney, testified earlier on Monday that the show had actually taken the letter “very seriously,” and sought to provide Mr. Smollett with additional security.As he began his testimony, Mr. Smollett depicted himself to the jury with a lengthy biographical summary of his career as someone who grew up in a middle-class family of performers, received some work as a child actor, became deeply involved in charity organizations and returned to acting, landing the major role on “Empire.”In January 2019, when the attack was reported, public sympathy for Mr. Smollett was immediate and widespread. But as the police investigation into the report stalled, suspicion grew about Mr. Smollett’s account, though the actor stood by it.Understand the Jussie Smollett TrialCard 1 of 5A staged hate crime? More

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      ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ Review: Nanny Doesn’t Know Best

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      The new family-friendly musical, adapted from the hit movie, ends up cowering in the original film’s shadow.In 1993, a film about an irresponsible father dressing up as a woman to manipulate his way back into his family’s life was a barrel of laughs. A man in a dress? Classic! He does impressions? Even better! He tries to sabotage his wife’s new relationship? Comedy gold!Truly, it was a different time.And that was the main challenge for the stage adaptation of “Mrs. Doubtfire,” a new musical that opened Sunday night at the Stephen Sondheim Theater. With music and lyrics by the brothers Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick and a book by Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell, “Mrs. Doubtfire” simultaneously tries to replicate an outdated story and update it for the times. But the show only ends up cowering in the original film’s shadow.And speaking of shadows, there is the outsize one of the incomparable Robin Williams. In the film, Williams brought his endearing playfulness to the role of Daniel Hillard, a struggling actor who lacks discipline as a father. When Daniel’s wife divorces him and is granted custody of their three children, he poses as the kindly but firm Scottish nanny Euphegenia Doubtfire in order to spend time with his kids.Rob McClure steps into Mrs. Doubtfire’s sensible shoes in this production. He’s vivacious on the stage, and his impressions, including a hilarious tongue-wagging Gollum, are precious. But the director Jerry Zaks’s ambivalent production tries to have it both ways: The story of a playful man-child with whom we empathize but whose good intentions can’t excuse his machinations. The film pulled it off at the time, primarily thanks to Williams’s charms. McClure’s Daniel, though, is more irritating than entertaining, and his antics — which include hacking into his wife’s email account to sabotage her nanny search — are more creepy than kooky.McClure as the title character, with, from left: Analise Scarpaci, Jake Ryan Flynn, Jenn Gambatese and Avery Sell.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut would Williams have fared much better in 2021, when the toxicity of this male character’s actions would raise alarms?That strain is everywhere in this production, whose 18-month pandemic hiatus coincided with renewed conversations about race, gender and equity.When Daniel asks his gay brother Frank (an amiable Brad Oscar) and brother-in-law Andre (a stylish J. Harrison Ghee) to latex-silicone-and-powder him into womanhood (the impressive makeup and prosthetics design is by Tommy Kurzman), they casually support what seems to be Daniel’s new interest in drag — until they hear his true intentions.Frank and Andre — who get a paper-thin story line about adopting a child, by the way — are very loosely meant to serve as the gay conscience of a decidedly hetero production. So they go along with the scheme, occasionally popping in for some comic relief. In one number, they also get a personal ensemble of male stylists snapping and flicking their wrists, because even the show’s gay stereotypes are dull.Lines from the movie about Mrs. Doubtfire having a penis have been excised, and in a surface-level attempt to make Daniel’s long-suffering wife, Miranda (Jenn Gambatese), a more feminist and sympathetic figure, the show’s creators have made her the owner of a body-positive activewear line called “M Body.” The pseudo-feminist song that she sings during a fashion show, “Shape of Things to Come,” is a painfully punny inspirational poster masquerading as a piece of music.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      At Long Last, Onscreen Portrayals of Lesbian Relationships Are Getting Complex

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      The shift comes after decades of stories that minimized romantic love between women as fruitless, or as some kind of phase.In most parts of the world, to be gay or transgender is to at some point realize that you’ve been taught, to varying degrees, to deny who you are and to feel shame about your desire to love and be loved — to be entitled to a full life. This is true, as well, of queer lives onscreen, where, until very recently, most narratives centered around death, whether it was the trans person too tragic to continue living — either as a result of murder (“Boys Don’t Cry,” 1999) or suicide, a trope that has existed since “Glen or Glenda” (1953), one of the earliest films to highlight transgender issues — or gay men felled by their own murderous impulses (“Cruising,” 1980) and, later on, complications from AIDS, representations of which have regularly treated the disease as a form of punishment.Then there were lesbian characters. They, too, were subjected to countless onscreen deaths, from Tara on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” in 2002 to Poussey on “Orange Is the New Black” in 2016, but queer women have also been disappeared in a different way: For nearly a century, affection between two women has often been depicted as unrequited, predatory, transient or otherwise unserious. Just think of the menacing, lonely Mrs. Danvers in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca” (1940), a famously queer-coded character; or, on a lighter note, Roseanne Barr and Mariel Hemingway on the former’s sitcom in 1994, or Calista Flockhart and Lucy Liu on “Ally McBeal” five years later. All these stories seemed to argue that the ultimate tragedy of lesbianism was that it was a choice, and that smart women, wanting marriage and children, chose otherwise. Such “lesbian kiss episodes,” as they’re derided today, were usually (and unsurprisingly) dreamed up by straight male Hollywood showrunners as a kind of titillation, according to Sarah Kate Ellis, 50, the chief executive officer of GLAAD, who says, “Lesbian storytelling has historically been told through the eyes of men and their experience of that, of their own desire.”Tara (Amber Benson), left, and Willow (Alyson Hannigan) on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”© 20th Century Fox Film Corp./courtesy of Everett CollectionNow, some two decades later, lesbian portrayals onscreen are finally starting to become deeper, more varied and more inclusive, moving beyond the aspirational (mostly rich, mostly white) women who dominated programs like Showtime’s “The L Word,” which debuted in 2004, or Todd Haynes’s 2015 film, “Carol,” based on “The Price of Salt,” Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel of mannered glances, and starring Cate Blanchett as a housewife who must choose between her female love and her daughter.In the past two years, there have been “The Wilds” (2020), Sarah Streicher’s Amazon Prime video series about a group of teenage girls that doesn’t overly conflate coming out with conflict, as well as indie films like Céline Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” (2019) and Miranda July’s “Kajillionaire” (2020), wherein love stories orbit around mutual desire rather than shared sexual frustration. In late 2019, when Showtime rebooted “The L Word,” the show was celebrated by fans for its more diverse cast — and more authentic writing, which didn’t shy away from the realities of menstruation, cunnilingus or seething jealousy. Gone was the tragic lesbian, forced to choose between love and a full life; instead, we got unpredictable, messy, complicated lesbian lives. “The ultimate privilege is being able to do anything we want,” says its 36-year-old showrunner, Marja-Lewis Ryan. “We’re getting closer to being able to have characters who are deeply [flawed] and not have them represent all of us.”The third season of “Master of None” focused on the marriage and relationship between Alicia (Naomi Ackie), left, and Denise (Lena Waithe).© Netflix/courtesy of Everett CollectionAnd what is the point of queer representation if not that? Not just that there’s less death and despair, or that there are happier endings, but that the misery and pathos of life is rendered with more complexity, because everyday life is sometimes miserable, too. “It’s so important to us to have characters [being] weird and crazy,” says the queer writer, producer and actor Lena Waithe, 37, when discussing the BBC thriller “Killing Eve,” soon to air its fourth season, which has thus far subverted the “will they, won’t they” clichés of the past — and, too, the murderous impulses — by layering each episode with chaotic, bizarre sexual tension.Waithe accomplished something similarly complex when, earlier this year, she co-wrote and starred in Season 3 of Netflix’s “Master of None,” a five-episode arc that centered on two women who are selfish, who step out on each other, who watch their dreams crumble but still manage to move forward. After their marriage eventually fractures, they bend, break and then start to heal themselves, offering a radical depiction of queerness that both references decades of downtrodden lesbian narratives and yet somehow still feels hopeful. Making the piece was, as Waithe says, a matter of “life and death,” as much for herself as for the other L.G.B.T.Q. creators it might someday inspire. “We spend our lives trying to fit into a world we don’t want to fit in,” she adds. “We don’t need to.” More

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      Jussie Smollett’s Lawyers Dispute Account That Attack Was Staged

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      Under questioning by Mr. Smollett’s defense team, two brothers who say they participated in a fake attack denied suggestions they had lied to avoid prosecution.Jussie Smollett’s lawyers suggested in court on Thursday that two brothers at the center of the case attacked the actor to scare him into hiring them as his personal security, and later, to avoid prosecution, falsely told the police that Mr. Smollett had planned it all as a hoax.The brothers, Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, have each testified that Mr. Smollett gave them detailed instructions on where and how to mildly attack him in January 2019.“You attacked Jussie because you wanted to scare him into hiring you as security,” said a lawyer for Mr. Smollett, Shay Allen, “so you could go back to L.A. and get paid $5,000 a week, didn’t you?”“No, sir,” Abimbola Osundairo replied.During cross-examination, the brothers, both aspiring actors and fitness aficionados, disputed that and other defense contentions about the attack. During more than 11 hours of testimony, which touched on minute details like Mr. Smollett’s grocery list and workout regimen, they told the court that Mr. Smollett instructed them to yell racist and homophobic slurs at him — and say, “This is MAGA country” — during the attack.During one of the brothers’ testimony, the defense asked for a mistrial, suggesting the judge had misspoken during the proceedings and later asked for the judge to acquit Mr. Smollett. But Judge James Linn ruled against Mr. Smollett in both instances.Thursday was a pivotal day in the trial as the prosecution, whose case relies heavily on the brothers’ credibility, rested after each brother told the jury in detail that Mr. Smollett had knowingly made a false police report about the attack.Abimbola Osundairo, 28, testified on Wednesday that Mr. Smollett, who is gay, dreamed up the scheme because he had been disappointed by what he saw as a muted response from the television studio to a death threat he received days earlier.Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo both appear in minor roles in the television show “Empire,” in which Mr. Smollett had starred. Abimbola Osundairo said he had agreed to participate in the hoax because he felt “indebted” to Mr. Smollett for securing him a role as a stand-in on the show, while Olabinjo Osundairo said that, as an aspiring actor, he had agreed because he wanted to “curry favor” with Mr. Smollett.The defense’s efforts to undermine the brothers’ credibility included questions about guns and drugs found in Abimbola Osundairo’s home and accusations that Olabinjo Osundairo had a history of making homophobic comments.Olabinjo Osundairo is not legally allowed to possess a gun because he was convicted of aggravated battery several years ago. But a detective testified earlier in the week that the guns were all Abimbola Osundairo’s and were owned legally and described the amount of cocaine discovered as “very small.”One of Mr. Smollett’s lawyers, Tamara Walker, also cited discrepancies between Olabinjo Osundairo’s testimony and what he had said to the grand jury in the case. He told the grand jury, for example, that he had decided to pour bleach, instead of gasoline, onto Mr. Smollett because he wanted to avoid being seen filling up a gas container on a surveillance camera. In court on Thursday, though, he testified that he had chosen bleach because he thought it would be safer on Mr. Smollett.The brothers remained composed during their sessions on the witness stand even as they were being questioned about several written conversations that Olabinjo Osundairo has had in which he made remarks that the defense cited as homophobic.Olabinjo Osundairo, 30, denied any bias, explained the remarks as mistakes he had made because he was upset and asserted that he had “no hate for anybody.” The prosecution had earlier in the day shown the jury a photo of the brothers at the Chicago Pride Parade in 2015 in which they were dressed as Trojan warriors for a float that centered around the condom brand of the same name.The mistrial request arose from this line of questioning as Judge Linn at one point described Ms. Walker’s questions about Mr. Osundairo’s past comments as “very collateral matters.” She argued, unsuccessfully, that the judge’s remark had discredited a part of the defense argument in front of the jury.A third lawyer for Mr. Smollett, Heather Widell, accused Judge Linn of making “snarling faces” during the defense questioning. The judge objected to Ms. Widell’s characterization and pointed out her own “smiles and frowns.”“There is no mistrial here,” Judge Linn said. “Frankly, I’m stunned you’d consider a mistrial based on that little colloquy.”Jussie Smollett’s trial entered its fourth day as the prosecution wound down its case and the defense challenged the credibility of two brothers who say the attack Mr. Smollett reported was a hoax.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressEarlier in the day, Olabinjo Osundairo testified that during the attack on Jan. 29, 2019, while his brother and Mr. Smollett were on the ground, he put a noose around Mr. Smollett’s face and made sure to pour the bleach on Mr. Smollett’s clothing, not his skin, to avoid severely injuring him.Understand the Jussie Smollett TrialCard 1 of 5A staged hate crime? More

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      Wakefield Poole, Pioneer in Gay Pornography, Dies at 85

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      He gave up a dance career to create a crossover, and now classic, hit film in 1971 that had both gay and straight audiences, and celebrities, lining up to see it.One New York night in the early 1970s, a dancer and budding filmmaker named Wakefield Poole went to see a gay porn flick called “Highway Hustler” at a run-down theater in Times Square with his friends. As he settled into a tattered seat, he prepared to spend the next 45 minutes or so enjoyably aroused.But as the film rolled, he experienced nothing of the kind. He thought that the movie was sleazy, that its sex scenes were unnecessarily degrading. He started laughing out loud, and one of his companions fell asleep.“I said to my friend, ‘This is the worst, ugliest movie I’ve ever seen!’” Mr. Poole, who died on Oct. 27 at 85, recalled in 2002. “Somebody ought to be able to do something better.”The Stonewall uprising in Greenwich Village had occurred two years earlier, and Mr. Poole, like countless gay men of his generation, was empowered in its aftermath. What he had witnessed onscreen that night didn’t resemble the sexual liberation he was experiencing as a proud gay man in New York.Thus, armed with a 16-millimeter Bolex camera, Mr. Poole decided to do something about it. He headed to Fire Island Pines, the secluded summer Eden for gay men just off Long Island, and there began filming experimental movies with his friends, capturing them making love on beaches and in shady groves.And he did so with an auteur’s touch, as if he were some horny version of D.A. Pennebaker, striving to portray artful realism in the male intimacy he was documenting.The adult film star Casey Donovan in a scene from “Boys in the Sand,” which was shot in the beach community of Fire Island Pines, off Long Island.Wakefield PooleMr. Poole soon made a feature-length, surrealistic movie called “Boys in the Sand” (the title a spoof on “The Boys in the Band,” the groundbreaking 1968 play and 1970 film adaptation about gay men in New York), and its release in 1971 proved revelatory. He was hailed as a pioneer of gay porn, and the film became a crossover hit that changed attitudes about pornography among both the gay and straight audiences that lined up to see it.The movie, with the adult film star Casey Donovan, was composed of three steamy vignettes: First, Mr. Donovan materializes from the ocean Venus-like to ravage a young man lying on the sand; then, at a beach house, he tosses a dissolving magic pill into a swimming pool, causing a hunk to emerge from the water; lastly, he pleasures himself while admiring a telephone line repairman working outside his window.When “Boys in the Sand” opened at the now gone 55th Street Playhouse in Manhattan, it became the talk of the town. The sex it portrayed between Adonic men frolicking in the Pines came across to viewers as blissful and guilt-free. Soon, celebrities like Liza Minnelli, Rudolf Nureyev and Halston were also lining up to see it.“I wanted a film,” Mr. Poole said at the time, “that gay people could look at and say, ‘I don’t mind being gay — it’s beautiful to see those people do what they’re doing.’”In a memoir, “Dirty Poole,” published in 2000, he related how, during the film’s release, its producer sneakily bought an ad for the film in The New York Times, leading Mr. Poole to speculate that the paper’s advertising department may not have looked at it too closely. Variety reviewed the movie, a rare instance of critical coverage of hard-core gay pornography by a mainstream publication (though it took a dim view of the movie). Even the film’s marquee billing challenged precedent: It displayed Mr. Poole’s real name.Mr. Poole in the early 1970s. He said of “Boys in the Sand,” “I wanted a film that gay people could look at and say, ‘I don’t mind being gay — it’s beautiful to see those people do what they’re doing.’”via Jim TushiskiWhile “Boys in the Sand” marked Mr. Poole’s official debut as a filmmaker (he had made some experimental short films earlier), his first passion was dance: He had led an impressive career performing in the New York-based company Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo and helping with the choreography of Broadway shows involving the likes of Richard Rodgers, Stephen Sondheim and Noël Coward.“There weren’t a lot of people who were out,” Mr. Poole told South Florida Gay News in 2014. “Just seeing my name above the title on a theater made its impact. Hundreds of people saw ‘Boys in the Sand’ and came out after seeing the film.”The year after “Boys” appeared, the landmark film “Deep Throat” was released, commencing a golden age of American pornography. “Wakefield was determined to elevate the gay porn genre,” Michael Musto, the longtime Village Voice writer, said in a phone interview. “This was a time when you had to leave your home to see pornography. It was a communal experience by necessity, and you had to be seen in your seat. He removed the shame of it.”Mr. Poole’s next hit, “Bijou,” followed a construction worker who stumbles on an invitation to a private club, where he joins a psychedelic bathhouse-style orgy. Then came “Wakefield Poole’s Bible!,” a creatively ambitious soft-porn movie that reimagined tales from the Old Testament, but it flopped.Frustrated with its failure, Mr. Poole started afresh in San Francisco, which had become an epicenter of the gay rights movement, although his troubles only worsened there: He broke up with his longtime partner, and he became addicted to freebasing cocaine.He soon directed a documentary-like film, “Take One,” in which he interviewed men about their carnal fantasies and had them act them out on camera, in one notorious moment engaging two brothers.Mr. Poole eventually moved back to New York, holing himself up in a cold-water flat in Chelsea to break his cocaine addiction. Trying for a comeback, he released “Boys in the Sand II” in 1984, but it didn’t make a splash.The AIDS crisis had begun, and the carefree gay paradise depicted in his original movie suddenly felt a world away.“The reason I stopped making films was the AIDS situation,” Mr. Poole told an interviewer. “I lost my fan base to AIDS. I saw them all die. It’s a miracle I’m not dead. Cocaine saved my life. I did so much coke, I couldn’t have sex.”Mr. Poole in an undated photo. “The reason I stopped making films was the AIDS situation,” he said. “I lost my fan base to AIDS. I saw them all die.”via Jim TushinskiWalter Wakefield Poole III was born on Feb. 24, 1936, in Salisbury, N.C. His father was a police officer and later a car salesman. His mother, Hazel (Melton) Poole, was a homemaker.Growing up, Walter fell in love with a boyhood friend, and they would crawl through each other’s window to be together. But their romance ended when Walter’s family moved to Florida, settling in Jacksonville. Years later, he said, after his friend had married a woman and started a family, they rekindled their passion one night.Walter caught the dance bug in Jacksonville and started studying ballet seriously. When he was 18, he headed to New York to pursue dance further and joined the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo when he was 21.He turned to moviemaking in the 1960s, captivated by the experimental films of Andy Warhol.As he pulled away from pornography in the mid-1980s, Mr. Poole needed to find a new way to make a paycheck in New York, so he studied at the French Culinary Institute and later landed a job in food services for Calvin Klein.He retired in his 60s and moved back to Jacksonville, where he died in a nursing home, a niece, Terry Waters, said. He left no immediate survivors.As Mr. Poole grew older, enthusiasts of gay history and vintage pornography collectors began revisiting his work. A documentary, “I Always Said Yes: The Many Lives of Wakefield Poole,” directed by Jim Tushinski, came out in 2016. New York art house theaters like Metrograph and Quad Cinema screened “Boys in the Sand.”In 2010, Mr. Poole, then 74, was invited to the Pines for a screening of his classic, although some gay residents there weren’t thrilled about it.A local film festival, responding to their complaints about the X-rated content, had declined to show the movie, so an opposing faction of residents organized their own event. Their group included a man who lived in a summer house that had been used in the film.That night, Mr. Poole was introduced to a packed auditorium as an unsung hero who had helped transform the Pines into an international destination. (“Boys in the Sand” was seen widely overseas.) He took the stage to applause.“What has happened here with the controversy is why I made this film,” he told the crowd. “It’s the ultimate of what I wanted this film to do, and that’s to not only make controversy, but to overcome controversy.”He added: “When I first came to Fire Island, I felt free for the first time in my life. I didn’t feel like a minority and I wanted everybody to suddenly feel that. So I said, ‘I can make a movie that no one will be ashamed to watch.’” More

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      The Real Surprise of ‘Passing’: A Focus on Black Women’s Inner Lives

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      By making the lesbian attraction between the main characters more explicit, the drama moves beyond mainstream Hollywood’s white gaze.Midway through the new drama “Passing,” Irene Redfield (Tessa Thompson), the light-brown-skinned, upper-middle-class protagonist, offers a unique insight into her psyche when she says to her friend Hugh, “We’re, all of us, passing for something or the other,” and adds, “Aren’t we?”Until now, Irene has successfully maintained her cover as both a respectable wife and proud African American woman. But when Hugh (Bill Camp) challenges her by asking why she does not pass for white like her biracial childhood friend, Clare Kendry (Ruth Negga), her response is a revelation, startling me almost as much as it did him.“Who’s to say I am not?” she snaps back.In that moment, I realized that what I had considered the B-plot of Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, “Passing,” had risen to the surface in the writer-director Rebecca Hall’s adaptation, giving us a narrative that remains all too rare in Hollywood today: the interior world of a Black woman’s mind.When I teach Larsen’s novel to my undergraduate students, I usually start with the obvious: its racial plot and the ways in which Clare finds refuge from racism by identifying as white, only to be tragically alienated from her Black family and community.But I mainly teach “Passing” through what I think is the novel’s real central conflict: same-sex female desire and the paranoia that begins to overtake Irene, and for that matter Larsen’s story line, as a result of her unconsummated relationship with Clare. In a 1986 essay on Larsen’s novel, the critic Deborah E. McDowell explained why this longing had to appear secondary to the emphasis on race. “The idea of bringing a sexual attraction between two women to full expression,” she wrote, was “too dangerous of a move” in 1929. Instead, “Larsen enveloped the subplot of Irene’s developing if unnamed and unacknowledged desire for Clare in the safe and familiar plot of racial passing.”Rather than explore the ways that Irene comes into her sexuality, racial passing — at the height of segregation in America — was considered a far more urgent and thus more conventional theme than that of Black women’s inner lives. As a consequence, Larsen’s novel ended up passing, too, eventually taking “the form of the act it implies,” McDowell concluded.Visually, Hall compensates for the novel’s restraint through stolen glances, flirtatious phrases, and lingering touches and kisses between Clare and Irene. As Irene’s tension mounts, the film externalizes it through other symbols: a loudly ticking grandfather clock, a pot of water boiling over and even her breaking a teapot at a midday social in her home. In these hints, we see both Irene’s desire to break free from the illusion of middle-class domesticity and heterosexuality that she performs, as well as the threat that Clare’s presence poses to Irene’s sense of control.But, to externalize Irene’s internal thoughts and her sublimated identity, the movie makes what is suggested in the novel far more explicit. For example, Irene’s confession to Hugh never actually happens in the book. Hall opted to amp up that moment, she explained in a video for Vanity Fair, because she wanted “to highlight the latent homosexuality and power dynamics” underlying their shared secret.But for all that movie does so very well — its subtle swing jazz score; its beautiful black-and-white montages evocative of the photographers Gordon Parks and Carrie Mae Weems; and the delightful cat-and-mouse performances by Thompson and Negga — it deliberately limits how much access we have to Irene. Such restrictions, after having a glimpse of Irene’s full personality, further reminded me of how few stories about African American female sexuality and subjectivity have been told on the big screen.In other words, at this moment, when Black artists are being celebrated and validated as never before, what does it mean to invest in films that fully move us beyond a racist or sexist gaze and into their innermost thoughts?Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More