While “Empire” producers decided to pull Jussie Smollett’s character from the season’s remaining episodes, one prominent actor from the series remains a vocal supporter.
As CrimeOnline has previously reported, Smollett was arrested earlier this month on suspicion of orchestrating a hate crime he claimed occurred in January.
Terrence Howard addressed the subject in an Instagram post showing his son playing with laughing Smollett while aboard a private plane, according to Fox News.
“All your lil homies got you…We love the hell outta you,” he wrote, followed by an emoji depicting a heart.
The post got a wide range of responses, including more than 420,000 likes as of this writing. Of course, many of the thousands of comments that followed were critical of Howard for supporting his costar in the face of serious allegations.
“Sorry you feel that way but that’s the only Jussie I know,” the actor wrote in response to one such critic.
He continued by asserting that the man he has grown to know “could never even conceive of something so unconscious and ugly.”
Though he stopped short of weighing in on the substance of the evidence being collected, Howard also advised others to do the same.
“His innocence or judgment is not for any of us to decide,” he wrote. “Stay in your lane and my lane is empathy and love and compassion for someone I’ve called my son for five years. It’s God’s job to judge and it’s ours to love and hope, especially for those that we claim to have loved.”
[Featured image: Terrence Howard, Andy Kropa/Invision/AP]
