In 2019, “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett convinced two of his friends, Nigerian brothers and aspiring actors Abimbola “Bola” and Olabinjo “Ola” Osundairo, to pretend to be White supremacists and to beat him up. In exchange, he agreed to pay them $3500, and they were under the impression that he would also help their acting career.

At first, Jussie and the brothers were successful with the staged crime, and the brothers flew to Nigeria to audition for the Nigerian version of the show “Big Brother.” A couple weeks later, when they flew back to Chicago, things had changed. At the airport, they were pulled aside at customs and taken to a detention cell.

It took almost 2 days, but Abimobola and Olabinjo eventually told police the truth. In court, they also told the jury what happened, and as a result, Jussie ended up being convicted of 5 felonies. He was sentenced to 150 days in jail, yet to this day, he is still sticking with his story of being attacked by White supremacists as a hate crime.

Now, Abimobola and Olabinjo are sharing even more details about what really happened including their thoughts before and after agreeing to Jussie’s scheme and their best guess as to why Jussie asked them to help him stage a hate crime.

The brothers have a new documentary series streaming on Fox Nation that’s called “Jussie Smollett: Anatomy of a Hoax.” For the documentary, Abimobola and Olabinjo and attorney Gloria Rodriguez were all interviewed about the elaborate scheme created by Jussie. 

During the interview, Abimobola and Olabinjo told Fox Nation that they used to think of Jussie as a close friend, but now, they think he’s “insane” for sticking to the hate crime story for so long. They said, “Insane. That’s when I really saw a different side of Jussie. Like, dude, really? This is when I knew that this dude was like a super villain.”

The brothers also shared that Jussie never told them why he wanted them to help him stage this crime, but they’re pretty sure they know anyway. Olabinjo said that Jussie wanted “to increase his star level.”

Alimobola added another guess as to Jussie’s motivation. He said, “He wanted to be the poster child for activism.”

Olabinjo quickly agreed with his brother. He added, “He wanted to be the hero for gay people, for black people.”

Watch the video below to learn more about this new documentary and see how Alimobola and Olabinjo, two Black men, respond when asked if they think they’re “believable White supremacists.”