Taraji P Henson CRIES After Bryshere Gray REVEALS What Will Smith DID | HO’

Taraji P. Henson is reportedly in tears, the Empire fandom is in shock, and Bryshere Gray is once again at the center of a story that sounds less like Hollywood and more like a cautionary tale gone off the rails.

Word on the street is that the former cast of Empire has been quietly trying to reach Bryshere to get him real help this time, because at this point, the man is being described as a ticking time bomb. And according to insiders, Taraji isn’t just concerned—she allegedly broke down when she heard what Will Smith and Diddy are being accused of doing to him behind the scenes.

If anyone ever needed help before the cameras stopped rolling, it was Bryshere. But help came late—if it came at all.

People fell in love with Bryshere when he exploded onto the screen as Hakeem Lyon, the flashy, impulsive youngest son of Lucious Lyon, played by Terrence Howard, and Cookie, played by Taraji. It was Lee Daniels who spotted him, loved his audition, flew him out to L.A., and had him read with Taraji and Terrence.

Lee liked him so much he started “mentoring” him. That’s where some folks say the story stops being a fairy tale. Fans still point back to that infamous Breakfast Club interview where Lee’s comments about Bryshere made everyone watching squirm.

The way he joked about spending too much time with Bryshere, how his own son didn’t like it, and that weird clapping motion like he was spanking someone while saying “yas, yas, yas” about this young actor felt off to a lot of people. You didn’t need subtitles to see that Bryshere looked uncomfortable. That was the first public red flag.

After Empire ended, Bryshere’s career didn’t just stall—it crashed. Instead of new roles and red carpets, he showed up in headlines for all the wrong reasons. In 2021, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to spend 10 days in an Arizona county jail, connected to a domestic incident involving his wife.

Police said she had multiple visible injuries and even claimed she was strangled to the point of briefly losing consciousness. Bryshere’s side of the story was that he was trying to stop her from harming herself, and he blamed someone named “Mac” for hurting her.

According to his wife, “Mac” wasn’t a real person at all—just the name Bryshere allegedly used when he didn’t want to be recognized, a kind of alias for room-service and late-night orders.

She also said Bryshere had bipolar disorder and ADHD, but refused to take his medication. That detail matters because as the years went on, his behavior looked less like a string of random bad decisions and more like a total unraveling.

There was the landlord drama back in Chicago in 2019, when he was accused of turning a condo into a horror set: the dog left alone for long stretches, allegedly using common areas as a bathroom, hardwood floors torn up, windows being used like doors, toilets clogged with flushed items, smoke where it wasn’t allowed, and even claims of him eating breakfast in a bathroom and leaving it in a state.

You didn’t need a judge to tell you something wasn’t right.

Then in November 2022, it happened again. Bryshere was arrested for allegedly violating probation. A woman who said she was dating him called the cops, claiming his behavior was escalating and that she feared for her safety. She claimed he threw a box of food at her and pulled her hair.

At this point, the narrative had shifted completely—from breakout star to someone spiraling in real time. And just when you think the public might lose track of him, he reappears online, trending for explicit content on his social accounts, posting videos with other men that are so graphic you can’t even pretend they’d pass on a mainstream timeline. If you know, you know.

Some fans say this is why someone like Taraji allegedly decided enough is enough. This isn’t just a former co-star turning into a tabloid headline.

This is the kid she called “son” on set turning into a cautionary meme on social media. But here’s where it gets darker. There’s this idea floating around that what’s happening to Bryshere isn’t random—that it’s part of what some people are calling the “Empire curse.” It sounds dramatic, but look at the receipts.

That show was massive. Huge ratings, huge buzz. But after the final season, the careers of most of its key players didn’t exactly skyrocket. In some cases, they flatlined.

Terrence Howard, who had already had a long career before Empire, announced back in 2019 that he was done with acting. He said he’d been “playing pretend” forever and didn’t see the point anymore. He didn’t just want to step back from big roles—he talked about walking away from the industry entirely.

Maybe he was just tired. But fans still lump that into the narrative of the so-called curse. Taraji, arguably the heart of the show, also went through her own storm after Empire ended.

She’s talked openly about not being paid what she believes she deserves, saying she hadn’t gotten a real raise since around Proud Mary, which dropped in 2018. Even as she carried projects and sold tickets, she still had to fight for every quote, every time.

Remember that promo run for The Color Purple, when she repeatedly opened up about feeling underpaid and under-supported? She said that after Empire wrapped, her team didn’t have any real deals, endorsements, or follow-up projects lined up for her, despite Cookie being a fashion and cultural phenomenon.

According to Taraji, all her team really wanted was for her to star in another Cookie-centric show. She said she would have done it if they had gotten it right, but they didn’t—and when she realized they had nothing else for her, she fired everyone. That’s the kind of move you make when you realize you’ve been carrying the room but still walking away with the smallest slice.

Then there’s Jussie Smollett. He didn’t just stumble after Empire—he detonated his own public image. In 2020, he was indicted on multiple counts of disorderly conduct for allegedly filing false police reports about an attack he claimed was a hate crime.

He said he was jumped late at night by men yelling political slogans, but investigators later concluded it was staged with the help of two brothers from Nigeria.

The fallout was brutal: jail time, probation, financial penalties, and an industry that quietly backed away. Overnight, the guy who was once a star on one of TV’s biggest shows became a cautionary headline.

Jussie later checked into a treatment facility, and his rep said he’d been through a rough few years and was working hard to make changes. People still argue he torched his own career, but one lingering question has never gone away: why would someone risk everything at the peak of their success?

Was it ego? Pressure? Or was it something deeper—some kind of invisible weight hanging over that whole Empire universe? That’s where the “Empire curse” keeps getting dragged back in. Not because curses are real, but because the pattern is hard to ignore.

Jussie, for his part, hasn’t entirely walked away from his former castmates. He’s actually spoken about Bryshere and said he’s been trying to reach him. When asked if they still communicate, Jussie said he had texted Bryshere, that he’d been actively looking for him, and that he doesn’t take brotherhood lightly.

He mentioned reaching out to Bryshere’s family as well, but also admitted that after what he’s been through, he’s not exactly a fan of people going public about his struggles. So he stopped short of saying too much about Bryshere, other than making it clear: he loves that man and thinks of him as a brother.

The sad part? Bryshere isn’t hard to find. He’s blasting his life across social media, posting explicit content that makes it seem like he’s less concerned about mainstream Hollywood and more about surviving day to day—somehow, some way. That’s where the whispers about Will Smith and Diddy come in, and where things get a lot more disturbing.

Jaguar Wright has been one of the loudest voices on this, doubling down on claims that Will Smith knew that young men in his circle—including Bryshere Gray, August Alsina, and even his own son Jaden—were allegedly being taken to spaces connected to Diddy where lines were blurred in the worst way.

According to her, these weren’t just parties; they were environments where boys were “turned out,” molded into something they never signed up to be. She’s called out Terrence Howard directly, saying that for a man who speaks so boldly about other issues, he stayed silent about what was supposedly happening to Bryshere on and around the Empire set. In her words, if he truly had integrity, he would have stood in the gap for that young man.

As for Will Smith, Jaguar claims that until he addresses what allegedly happened to these young men under his influence—boys who later became troubled men—there will always be a stain on his legacy. She even went so far as to allege that there’s a tape documenting some of the worst of what Bryshere was subjected to, and that Jaden Smith and Justin were present.

The details she described have been so graphic that people can barely even repeat them without censoring themselves. The implication is that whatever happened wasn’t just unethical—it was soul-crushing.

Jaguar didn’t stop there. She also turned her attention to Bryshere’s mother, accusing her of looking the other way for fame and money. She claimed his mother knew about what Will and Charlie Mack were allegedly doing, but ignored it so she could protect her image.

According to Jaguar, Charlie was allowed to “tune that boy up” even knowing that Bryshere had bipolar disorder and ADHD. She painted a picture of a young man being pushed into situations he didn’t fully understand, treated more like some kind of bait than someone who needed protection.

In Jaguar’s version of events, Bryshere didn’t just lose control as an adult; he was set up to crash long before his mugshots hit the internet. She says she even tried to go to a spiritual leader she trusted to get help for “the kids,” only to be told there were other priorities—like finishing a book. That’s when the narrative shifts from scandal to tragedy: talent after talent, allegedly used, chewed up, and left to figure it out alone.

And this is where Taraji comes back into the spotlight. Behind the scenes, the story goes that she finally broke down when all these allegations about Will Smith, Diddy, and what happened to Bryshere really hit her.

This wasn’t just about him being unruly or “hard to work with.” If even a fraction of these claims are true, she’s staring at the possibility that the kid she played mom to on screen may have been dealing with things no one on set was truly protecting him from.

It’s one thing to say a show is cursed as a joke. It’s another to realize the “curse” might actually be a trail of broken people who were never shielded from the dark side of the machine.

Now, behind the memes and the trending clips, there’s a real question hanging over the entire situation: is anyone actually going to help Bryshere? Is someone like Taraji going to step in beyond just words and try to get him proper medical, emotional, and legal support? Or is Hollywood going to do what it does best—shake its head, whisper “poor boy,” and move on to the next storyline once the views drop?

What’s happening with Bryshere Gray is heavy. It’s messy. It’s uncomfortable. But it’s also a mirror: a young man who once had everything going for him, now drifting further from the version of himself that fans fell in love with. Empire ended years ago, but the fallout from that world is still playing out in real time.

And until someone with real power and real compassion steps in for him, the “Empire curse” is going to look less like a joke and more like a label he never asked for but can’t seem to escape.