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Has Jussie Smollett left ‘Empire’ TV series?


Spoiler alert: Thursday’s episode of the Fox-hit music drama series Empire, which is on its second season, ended with Jamal Lyon, the second son of Luscious and Cookie Lyon taking a bullet that was meant for his father.

Before the episode ends it shows Jamal, real name Jussie Smollett, being rushed into surgery fighting for his life.

As one of the main actors on Empire, most of his fans were confident that he would survive the ordeal.

But the actor took to his Twitter page to ‘confirm’ that his time at Empire was up.

The tweet touched off speculation among his fans that he had left Empire; the actor not making the situation any easy by going MIA on all his social media platforms since Thursday.

The tweet talked about his tenure on the series, and referred to his future and new plans, with a red rose emoji at the end.

Could this be another long lines of ruses made by Hollywood stars to increase ratings?

In 2014, singer Beyoncé’s sister, Solange, and Jay z created a similar situation, after a video of Solange attacking the rapper inside an elevator went viral.

Later, Beyoncé’s father Mathew Knowles, in an interview with TMZ, confessed that the incident was staged in order to sell tickets for their upcoming tour and boost Solange’s album sales.

“The jet I mind trick fools you a lot of time, so the things you see are done to make things explode, to make everyone talk about it. Ticket sales went up, Solanges album sales went up 200 per cent,” said Mathew Knowles on a TMZ interview.

The Entertainment Weekly reports that Smollett is not leaving the show and remains under contract.

Smollett has been a fixture on the show since its debut in 2015, playing Cookie Lyon (Taraji P. Henson) and Lucious Lyon’s (Terrence Howard) gay son who transforms into a music superstar.