Jussie Smollett recently revisited his "darkest day," referring to the day of his 2019 arrest, five years after it unfolded. 

The former “Empire” star was charged for allegedly staging a hate crime hoax, claiming two men assaulted him with racist and homophobic slurs, placed a noose around his neck, and doused him in bleach while on his way home from a Subway sandwich shop on Jan. 29, 2019. While initial charges were dropped, Smollett faced renewed prosecution in 2020 and was convicted of disorderly conduct in 2021. He received a five-month jail sentence, was fined, and is currently appealing the case.

Smollett continues to assert his innocence despite the widespread assumptions surrounding the case. "I was numb," he told PEOPLE in an interview published on Saturday (Sept. 28). "I didn't know how to connect the dots. I really genuinely did not know. I couldn't make sense of what was going on, and I couldn't make sense of what people were actually thinking... what exactly do they think happened? I couldn't put two and two together."

The 42-year-old believed there was "no way" people would take the "stupid rumor" seriously, attributing most of the chatter to his "haters." He explained, "They had a mission. I felt very disconnected from that. I still to this day can't entirely make sense of, 'What the f--- was that?' But obviously it was painful. I certainly am not going to sit here and try to act to the world as if I was fine."

Smollett added, "We're still dealing with the repercussions from that narrative. We're still dealing with that every day. At the same time, it's not in my mental and it's not in my soul, it's not in my spirit. People can say what they want about you, but they have no control. They can do whatever they want, they can even put you behind bars. They can control your physical, but they can't control my mind. They can't control my spirit. They can't control my soul, and they can't control the knowledge that I have of who I am."

Speaking about his arrest on Feb. 21, 2019, he recalled, "That was a pretty dark day because that's when everything clicked to me about what was happening. A lot of things tested my strength, a lot of things tested my mental, but the one thing I never lost — I never started thinking that I am somebody that I'm not. That is the one thing that did not happen. Keep in mind, I was deep in my thirties when this happened. This isn't like I'm a 16-year-old or a 20-year-old, [where] this is impacting their very being of who they believe that they are. I never started thinking that I am somebody that I'm not."