Jussie Smollett appears to have moved on from his broken engagement.
The Empire actor was spotted getting cozy with Queer Eye star Karamo Brown in Los Angeles on Monday, June 29 — just weeks after Smollett called off his engagement.
According to TMZ, the two men were seen having lunch with Brown’s mom, running errands and hiking through Runyon Canyon. The pair also showed plenty of affection, with Smollett holding Brown’s chin at one point.
Broken engagement
The new romance comes shortly after Smollett and former fiancé Jabari Redd went their separate ways after three years together.
A source told TMZ that Smollett is “focused on moving on and his music career.”
The two split about a year after Smollett announced their engagement in June 2025, posting a photo of the proposal with the caption, “I’ll be spending my birthday with my Fiancé … He said YES.”
The former couple had also worked together, costarring in the 2024 film The Lost Holliday, which Smollett directed.
Karamo Brown’s love life
Brown has also weathered a broken engagement.
The culture expert popped the question to his partner of eight years, Ian Jordan, at a surprise birthday bash for the director in 2018, but they called it quits two years later after more than a decade as a couple.
Most recently, Brown shared a years-long romance with photographer Carlos Medel, who confirmed in February 2025 that they’d gone their separate ways.
The 2019 incident
Smollett’s public image took a hit in 2019 after he claimed that he was attacked by two masked men in Chicago.
He alleged the assailants punched him, poured bleach on him, yelled racial slurs and wrapped a rope around his neck.
Chicago police initially investigated the incident as a possible hate crime but later said they did not find enough evidence to support Smollett’s claims.
In 2021, he was found guilty on five felony disorderly conduct counts for making false reports to the police. The Illinois Supreme Court later overturned the conviction without ruling on whether Smollett was innocent.
‘The Truth About Jussie Smollett?’
Netflix revisited the scandal in the 2025 documentary The Truth About Jussie Smollett?, which took a closer look at the allegations and subsequent investigation.
The documentary featured never-before-seen footage and new interviews with Smollett as well as brothers Abimbola Osundairo and Olabinjo Osundairo — the two men who told police they were hired by Smollett to stage an attack on the actor.
It was also Smollett’s first time speaking publicly about the case since his 2019 interview with ABC News’ Robin Roberts. Over the years, he has continued to stand by his account of what happened that night.