Jussie Smollett has called off his engagement to actor Jabari Redd, less than a year after publicly proposing and sharing the news with fans on social media in June 2025.
The announcement drew widespread attention, with Smollett posting photographs of the proposal online alongside the caption
“I’ll be spending my birthday with my Fiancé… He said YES.”
The engagement represented a rare personal disclosure for Smollett, who has largely kept his private life out of the spotlight throughout his career.
Jussie Smollett ends engagement with Jabari Redd
Smollett called off the engagement in early June 2026, as reported by TMZ, with the split confirmed less than 12 months after the public proposal.
No official reason for the break-up has been shared by either party, and neither Smollett nor Redd had addressed the split directly at the time of publishing.
Redd is an American actor with screen credits including Tyler Perry’s House of Payne, where he appeared in 2012, and the long-running drama series The Chi. He maintained a relatively low public profile throughout the engagement, with most of his visible social media presence tied to his relationship with Smollett rather than his own professional projects.
Smollett, 43, rose to global prominence playing Jamal Lyon on the Fox drama Empire, which ran from 2015 to 2020.
His character was one of the first openly gay black lead roles on a major US network drama, a distinction that earned him significant industry recognition at the time.
What Jussie Smollett has been doing since Empire
In the years since Empire concluded, Smollett has been building an independent music career. Reports indicate he is focused on new music as his primary creative outlet following the end of the engagement, with no major acting projects publicly announced at the time of publishing.
The split comes at a point when Smollett has been gradually re-entering public life after a period dominated by legal proceedings. He has spoken in recent months about returning to the work that defined him before the controversies of the late 2010s, positioning music as the vehicle for that return.
Whether Smollett and Redd address the break-up publicly, or allow the split to speak for itself without a statement, remains to be seen.
Celebrity engagements that end quietly before reaching the altar are not uncommon in the entertainment industry, and the speed of this one, from proposal to split in under a year, has made it a talking point across social media in the days since the confirmation.
