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Jurnee Smollett has been on television screens since she was five years old — from Full House and Eve’s Bayou to an Emmy-nominated turn in Lovecraft Country. Yet behind almost every search about the actress sits another question: who are jurnee smollett parents? It is a fair question, because Joel and Janet Smollett did something almost unheard of — they raised six children, and every single one of them became a working child performer.
This is the full story of the jurnee smollett parents story: a Jewish father of Russian and Polish descent, an African American mother from New Orleans who marched in the civil rights movement, thirteen house moves, one family sitcom, a famous kitchen table — and the loss that struck the family in 2015, just as its children reached their biggest fame.
Table of Contents
Quick Facts
| Father | Joel Smollett (died January 7, 2015) |
| Mother | Janet Smollett (born Janet Harris) |
| Father’s background | Jewish, of Russian and Polish descent; worked as a cable splicer |
| Mother’s background | African American, from New Orleans; civil rights activist |
| Children | Six: Jojo, Jazz, Jussie, Jurnee, Jake and Jocqui — all child performers |
| Family fame | All six siblings starred together in the ABC sitcom On Our Own (1994–95) |
| Family cookbook | The Family Table: Recipes and Moments from a Nomadic Life (2018) |
Joel and Janet Smollett: A Civil Rights Love Story
Any account of jurnee smollett parents has to begin where they began: in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Joel and Janet met as young people campaigning for civil rights. It was the defining cause of their generation, and it became the foundation of their household — a home where justice, books and big conversations mattered as much as bedtime.
They married in the 1970s, reportedly in 1975, and built one of the era’s quietly radical families: an interracial couple raising biracial children through a period when that was still far from ordinary in America. Their six children were born across New York and California, and the family moved constantly — thirteen times, coast to coast, as the siblings themselves recount in their cookbook. Through every move, the jurnee smollett parents kept the same centre of gravity.
That nomadic life could have scattered them. Instead, the opposite happened. Wherever the family landed, Janet rebuilt the same ritual: a long wooden kitchen table, home-cooked food, and all six children pulled in close. Friends and interviewers have described the Smolletts for decades with the same word — a tribe. That single word says more about jurnee smollett parents than any headline.
Joel Smollett: The Father
Joel Smollett was Jewish, the son of a family with roots in Russia and Poland — his father was a Polish Jew and his mother of Russian descent, according to family profiles. Profiles give his birth date as October 8, 1956. He grew up in a liberal household and, per family accounts, took part in the civil rights era’s marches and campaigns as a young man. His half of the jurnee smollett parents story starts with those roots.
He was not a showbusiness father in the usual sense. Joel worked with his hands as a journeyman cable splicer for power and telephone companies in New York, a blue-collar trade far removed from studio lots. Jussie Smollett has described him in interviews as fiercely protective of his family and proud to the point of stubbornness about his identity — a man who, his son said, would “kill” if he was called white. It is a story jurnee smollett parents told with pride, not apology.
His children have also been honest that he was, in Jussie’s words, “far from perfect,” and less present in their earliest years than he would later wish. But the same accounts stress the second half of the story: Joel changed, grew into the father his children needed, and spent his later years close to the family. When people search for jurnee smollett parents, Joel is the half of the story the family lost first — and the one his children speak of with unmistakable pride.
Janet Smollett: The Mother
Janet Smollett, born Janet Harris, is African American. Her son Jake has said she was born in Galveston, Texas, and raised in New Orleans — the “7th Ward” roots that later flavoured the family’s cooking. Food ran in her bloodline: her own mother worked as a housekeeper and would cook a week of meals in advance, so the children always came home to dinner. Those roots shaped the jurnee smollett parents household as much as any march.
Her activism was the real thing. “My mom was in the movement with Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, and one of her first mentors was Julian Bond,” Jussie once told an interviewer, naming the Black Panther founders and the civil rights leader. “To this day, Angela Davis is one of her dearest friends. We’ve spent Mother’s Day with Angela.” The movement was not history to the Smollett children; it was their mother’s address book. For jurnee smollett parents, the movement was never past tense.
Janet was also, remarkably, the only acting coach her children ever had — Jussie and Jurnee have both said so. She drilled six kids in auditions, lines and poise from the kitchen table, while filling that same table with gumbo, picadillo and holiday feasts from two traditions. If Joel supplied the family’s backbone, Janet — the other half of the jurnee smollett parents partnership — supplied its engine, its conscience and its cookbook.
Six Siblings, All Raised to Perform
The children arrived in order: Jojo, the eldest; then Jazz; then Jussie; then Jurnee, born October 1, 1986, in New York City; then Jake, born July 29, 1989; and finally Jocqui, born August 2, 1994. Four boys and two girls — and, in a statistic with few parallels in Hollywood, all six became professional child actors. No account of jurnee smollett parents can skip that statistic: six for six.
Jurnee’s own career began at five, in the 1991 short film Sunday in Paris, before she charmed America as Denise Frazer on Full House and Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper. The siblings’ upbringing mixed two inheritances deliberately: profiles of the family note that the children celebrated Passover and Chanukah alongside Christmas, Easter and Kwanzaa. Jurnee later coined a word for that blend — “Blewish,” for Black and Jewish. The blend was pure jurnee smollett parents: two traditions, one table.
None of it was accidental. The jurnee smollett parents project, if it can be called that, was to raise children who were performers on the outside and activists at the core — kids who could quote classic films, cook a family feast and argue about justice at the same table. By any measure, it worked.
The On Our Own Years: A Real Family on Television
In 1994, ABC did something networks almost never do: it built a sitcom around six real-life siblings. On Our Own starred all six Smollett children as the Jerrico kids, a family of orphans being raised by their eldest brother, and ran for twenty episodes across the 1994–95 season on the network’s family line-up.
For jurnee smollett parents Joel and Janet, the show was the ultimate extension of their kitchen-table coaching — their entire family, on national television, playing a family. Jurnee, then seven and eight, played Jordee Jerrico, and the series remains a beloved piece of 1990s nostalgia for viewers who grew up with it.
The experience also bonded the siblings in a way ordinary childhoods rarely do. They worked the same hours, learned the same set etiquette and went home to the same table, where their parents made sure homework, chores and ordinary family life continued around the filming schedule. Cast and crew who worked with them in those years have often remarked on how tight-knit and well drilled the six children were. That discipline came straight from jurnee smollett parents.
The sitcom also launched the children’s separate paths. Jurnee broke out dramatically at ten in Kasi Lemmons’s Eve’s Bayou (1997), winning a Critics’ Choice Award and announcing herself as the sibling most likely to build an adult career. Jussie stepped away from acting for years before returning triumphantly in Empire; Jazz moved into producing and food television; Jake became a chef; Jocqui, the baby of the family, later worked in data and production.
Losing Their Father: Joel’s Death in 2015
The family’s hardest chapter came in the new year of 2015. Joel Smollett died on January 7, 2015, after a battle with cancer. He was 58. His children had gathered around him through his illness, and it was Jussie who announced the loss publicly, writing: “Yesterday, January 7, 2015, my family lost our king, but we gained a righteous angel. You showed the deepest strength and dignity until your very last breath. You are not just a fighter… You are the CHAMP.” The tribute captured what jurnee smollett parents meant to all six children.
The date carried a bitter symmetry: that same evening, January 7, 2015, Jussie’s series Empire premiered on Fox and became a phenomenon — the biggest professional night of the children’s lives arriving on the day they buried their father’s era. The siblings marked Joel’s life with the hashtag #cancersucks and a stream of tributes that made clear how central he remained to all six of them.
For anyone following jurnee smollett parents today, this is the dividing line in the story: everything since 2015 has been the children carrying forward what Joel and Janet built, with Janet — still the family’s matriarch — at the head of the table he no longer sits at.
The Legacy: Justice, Food and an Unbreakable Family
The clearest inheritance from jurnee smollett parents is activism. Jurnee began raising awareness of HIV/AIDS at eleven years old, after losing a member of the On Our Own crew to the disease as a young child, and she has served on the boards of Artists for a New South Africa and the Children’s Defense Fund. Her defining adult roles — an escaped slave fighting for freedom in Underground, a heroine confronting racist terror in Lovecraft Country — read like her mother’s lessons turned into art. As family friend Alfre Woodard put it: “Their sense of justice is very strong, and it permeates everything that they do.”
The other inheritance is food. In 2018, Jazz, Jussie, Jurnee and Jake published The Family Table: Recipes and Moments from a Nomadic Life, more than 130 recipes — 7th Ward Gumbo, Dad’s Cuban Picadillo, Brown Butter Lamb Chops — built around Janet’s cooking and the hand-made butcher-block table she rebuilt in every new home, a three-day ritual that made each house theirs. The siblings had already cooked together on the Food Network series Smollett Eats. Both projects carried the jurnee smollett parents philosophy: feed people, and tell the truth.
Today Janet remains the centre of a family that still gathers, still cooks and still shows up for one another in public and in private. Six children, two faiths, one movement and one table: that is the Smollett formula — and it is why the story of these two parents keeps being searched for, long after the sitcom ended.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who are Jurnee Smollett’s parents?
Jurnee Smollett’s parents are Joel Smollett and Janet Smollett (born Janet Harris). Joel was Jewish, of Russian and Polish descent, and worked as a cable splicer. Janet is an African American civil rights activist from New Orleans. Together they raised six children, all of whom became child performers.
What happened to Jurnee Smollett’s father?
Joel Smollett died of cancer on January 7, 2015, aged 58. His son Jussie announced the news in a tribute calling him “our king” and “the CHAMP,” and all six children were by his side during his illness. His death remains the most searched chapter of the jurnee smollett parents story.
How is Jurnee Smollett related to Jussie Smollett?
Jussie is her older brother. He is the third of the six Smollett siblings — Jojo, Jazz, Jussie, Jurnee, Jake and Jocqui — and Jurnee is the fourth. All six starred together in the sitcom On Our Own.
What does Jurnee Smollett mean by “Blewish”?
“Blewish” is a word Jurnee coined for her combined Black and Jewish heritage. The family celebrated both traditions at home, including Passover and Chanukah alongside Christmas, Easter and Kwanzaa.
How many siblings does Jurnee Smollett have?
She has five siblings: brothers Jojo, Jussie, Jake and Jocqui, and one sister, Jazz Smollett. All six were child actors, and four of them — Jazz, Jussie, Jurnee and Jake — later co-authored the family cookbook The Family Table.
Did Jurnee Smollett’s mother write a cookbook?
Janet’s cooking is the heart of The Family Table: Recipes and Moments from a Nomadic Life (2018), written by four of her children. The book collects more than 130 family recipes, including her 7th Ward Gumbo, and the story of the hand-made kitchen table she rebuilt in every home the nomadic family moved to.
Conclusion
So who are the jurnee smollett parents behind one of Hollywood’s most famous sibling acts? Joel Smollett, a Jewish cable splicer of Russian and Polish descent, and Janet Smollett, a New Orleans activist who knew the civil rights movement from the inside. They raised six children across thirteen homes and two traditions, coached them all onto television, fed them from one unshakeable table — and left them a legacy of justice, food and loyalty that Jurnee and her siblings carry in everything they do. For another famous performing family, meet Davy Jones’ daughters today.
