When you see Jurnee Smollett in the likes of Lovecraft Country and Birds of Prey, you
probably don't even realize you're watching a grown-up Denise from Full House. So let's
take a tour through her resume to see how she went from child star to industry vet.
When you consider Jurnee Smollett's family background, it makes total sense that she
was such a natural on Full House. She's the fourth of six kids, who have all been involved
in the performing arts at some point in their lives. Just like the Full House clan, the
Smollett siblings have been incredibly close throughout their whole lives. Her older brother
Jussie told The New York Times that the family affectionately refers to themselves as "Smoll
Nation" because they have their very own culture. As Jussie recalled of his sister to the Times,
"At a year old, she was like a mix of Diana Ross and Elizabeth Taylor. She was boss from
the beginning."
"What kind?"
"Sour cream and onion!"
"Really?!"
"Sure! Why would I lie about potato chips?"
In 1994, all six of the Smollett siblings teamed up for their very own sitcom, called
On Our Own. Airing for one season on ABC, it starred the real-life brothers and sisters
as a family who lose their parents and are then raised by their big brother. And Jurnee's
not the only Smollett who's gone on to adult stardom. Jussie, for one, played Jamal Lyon
on Fox's hip hop soap opera Empire until he was written out of the show. Not all of the
Smollett kids have remained in showbiz, but they all remain close and help each other
with their careers whenever they can. Jurnee and Jussie run a production company alongside
their sister Jazz, and the siblings later banded together to support their brother Jake
on the Food Network show Smollett Eats. As Jurnee told the New York Post of the show,
"It’s really like a sneak peek into what we like to do as a family. Food is such a
centerpiece of our lives."
Jurnee Smollett's child stardom wasn't limited to the small screen. By the age of 10, she
was wowing movie audiences with her turn as the title character in the Southern Gothic
drama Eve's Bayou. Starring alongside such luminaries as Samuel L. Jackson and Lynn Whitfield
as her parents, she clearly made a huge impression on her castmates. Her on-screen aunt Debbi
Morgan told The New York Times,
"With a part like Eve, it had to be an exceptional child. It was something innate that Jurnee
did up there on that screen. You can't teach that."
"I want him dead!"
While all of the adults around her were impressed with her performance, it was just a day's
work for the precocious Smollett. As she told The New York Times at the time,
"My agent called and told my mommy about this movie that she thought was really good for
me. She said Eve was me. So my mommy and me and my sister read the script and we talked
about Eve and how I should portray her and what Eve was about."
As with many things in her life, Eve's Bayou was a family affair for Smollett, as her real-life
younger brother Jake played her on-screen brother Poe.
While Jurnee Smollett enjoyed well-rounded roles when she was a child star, she found
it increasingly difficult to find satisfying parts as she grew into adulthood. Like many
women in the industry, she became frustrated with being typecast as a mere accessory to
a male-centric storyline. As she told BuzzFeed in 2016,
"It's been about finding roles that weren't set dressing, characters who weren't just
the girlfriend. You don't want to be the earpiece for his problems where you have to help push
the plot forward and your identity is directly connected to your male counterpart's storyline.
You have no arc of your own and you're really irrelevant."
Despite those struggles, Smollett continued to work steadily. During her twenties, she
starred in such notable movies as the Denzel Washington-directed The Great Debaters in
2007 and Tyler Perry's Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor in 2013. And in 2016,
she appeared in the sports biopic Hands of Stone alongside the likes of Usher and Robert
De Niro.
Although Smollett has had plenty of silver screen success, she's really stamped her name
on the industry as a TV star, even though she had doubts about that career path. As
she explained to Buzzfeed in 2016,
"I did guest spots here and there, but I had a rule where I said, 'No, I'm not doing television."
But she later changed her mind, because, as she explained,
"They're just writing more complex women in television."
One of those complex women that Smollett played was high school student Jess Merriweather
on the football drama Friday Night Lights. In typical Smollett fashion, her own family
history informed the part, as she told GQ in 2010,
"[My siblings and I] used to play touch football, where you put the little rag in your pocket."
Smollett has appeared in other celebrated TV shows like HBO's supernatural True Blood,
the NBC drama Parenthood, and WGN's period piece Underground, which tells the story of
the Underground Railroad.
When she's not busy making movies and TV shows, Smollett manages to slot a hefty amount of
charity work and activism into her schedule. She inherited her passion for standing up
for what she believes in from her mother Janet, who was active in the civil rights movement.
As Jussie Smollett revealed to The New York Times in 2013,
"My mom was in the movement with Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, and one of her first mentors
was Julian Bond."
"The thing that my mom raised us to believe is, you do the work that no one sees."
Although Jurnee values her activism, she admits that it can be hard to square her robust morals
with some of the roles that she's offered. As she put it to The New York Times,
"It makes it hard to just be an actor and to sell your soul, because you have this conscience.
I think that's why I say no to projects, that's why Jussie says no to projects, and that's
why we fight for the ones that we're told 'no' to."
In October 2010, Jurnee Smollett married Canadian-born musician Josiah Bell in an intimate ceremony
at a Los Angeles botanical garden. Smollett decided to hyphenate her last name to Smollett-Bell
after marrying, and she credited the success of her relationship to the fact that she and
Bell were friends before they realized they had a romantic connection. As she told The
Hollywood Reporter in 2013,
"We were best friends before we started even dating, so we had this really great foundation.
I think one of the challenging things about any lasting relationship is that you have
to be so vulnerable. I think as human beings we try to hide our flaws and try to present
this perfect person, this person we wish we were to our spouse when that causes so many
troubles."
In 2016, Smollett and Bell welcomed a baby named Hunter Zion. She announced the little
one's arrival on Instagram and has shared a few adorable snaps with her fans since his
birth. Her favorite thing about motherhood is the way that her son helps her see the
world afresh. As she told People Magazine,
"He's teaching me so much about myself. He's teaching me so much about love. I see myself
in him, and I start to love that about myself even more. It's like I see the world differently
now, through his eyes. He makes me reassess, really, what matters."
Family life isn't always easy, and Jurnee Smollett knows that perhaps better than anyone.
In 2020, she filed for divorce from Josiah Bell after a decade of marriage. The couple
had separated quietly the year before, with Smollett noting to The Hollywood Reporter
that she was happy to spend some quality time with her son during the pandemic lockdown.
Smollett has also had to deal with the aftermath of her brother Jussie being accused of staging
an attack on himself. She's talked about how difficult it was not to be able to publicly
defend her brother from something she's convinced he could never have done. As she told The
Hollywood Reporter,
"I look at him sometimes and I'm like, 'He's so strong.'"
She also revealed that Jussie moved in with her in the wake of her divorce and that he
was staying busy with creative pursuits and had the full support of his family.
Jurnee Smollett just knew she had to play Black Canary in 2020's Birds of Prey. The
character's superpower allows her to, quite literally, take on anyone with the strength
of her own voice. She was such a huge fan of the character that she used Black Canary's
avatar whenever she played video games. She had given birth shortly before filming on
the movie began, but she nevertheless threw herself into training multiple times a week.
As she admitted to Marie Claire,
"I lived in a constant state of pain!"
Smollett understood the importance of taking on this part, not just to herself but to all
the little girls watching, and so she committed to playing it truthfully. As she explained
to Marie Claire,
"In the film, we're meeting Black Canary before she actually becomes Black Canary, in the
sense that she hasn't really owned her power. She's struggling with the gift she has. She
struggles with the fact that she has a gift that she doesn't want to own. To me, that's
something I can honestly just relate to. I think we all can."
"I mean, we were amazing there!"
"Yeah! Hell, yeah!"
Smollett is picky about her roles, preferring quality over quantity and only taking on work
that truly speaks to her as an artist. In the case of the HBO horror-fantasy series
Lovecraft Country, set during the 1950s and loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft's many horrifying
creations, this was more than just a job for Smollett. She has frequently felt left out
of genre fare because of her race, and she saw Lovecraft Country as an opportunity to
reclaim some of that power. As she described it to Harper's Bazaar,
"Seeing Black folks swim and dance and fight off demons and participate in magic, it’s
an honor to be a part of something that feels so disruptive."
"The roles you're offered as a Black woman are so dismissive, and- and not really central
to the plot."
Smollett considers Lovecraft Country's fantastical retelling of history "protest art." As she
explained,
"We're just telling the truth. The unfortunate truth is that as a nation, the systemic racism
that this nation has been built upon has yet to be dismantled."
Smollett also discussed the show with Deadline, as she described the removal of Black voices
in art as "a disease." She also said,
"As an artist, if you can be one more notch that contributes to painting a fuller picture
of who we are, it's food for your soul."
Actors are often expected to be chameleons on screen, and luckily for Jurnee Smollett,
she's happy to shed her outer skin to bring a role to life. Her character of Leti on Lovecraft
Country is someone whose appearance means a lot to her, from her chic bob to the pop
of her red pout and matching nails. As the actress noted to Vogue,
"There’s something very dangerous about her claws, as I call them."
Simply put, Smollett was eager to embody Leti as sincerely as possible. When the director
of the pilot episode asked her to chop off her own locks, she was only too happy to oblige,
as she admitted,
"I was looking for an excuse to cut off my hair anyway."
Plenty of time and effort went into creating the perfect bob for Leti, with mood boards
created that included icons like Elizabeth Taylor, Eartha Kitt, and Lena Horne. As Smollett
explained,
"In a time and era when the erasure of Black folks was so prevalent, Leti is going to be
seen, she is going to stake her claim."
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