Jussie Smollett was seen affectionate with Karamo Brown during a Monday outing in Los Angeles, and the public display immediately shifted attention to whether the two are more than just friends. The sighting came only weeks after Smollett ended his three-year engagement to Jabari Redd.
Lunch With Brown’s Mom
Smollett and Brown were seen having lunch with Brown’s mom, then running errands and hiking through Runyon Canyon. Smollett was also seen playfully cupping Brown’s chin, a small gesture that gave the outing its PDA label and made the day read less like a casual meetup than a relationship-soft launch.
For readers tracking the public side of both men’s personal lives, the setting matters: Los Angeles, a midday lunch, errands, and a hike create a string of open-air moments that are easy to photograph and hard to dismiss as accidental. That is the kind of visibility that turns a private hangout into a relationship story before either person says a word.
Weeks After Jabari Redd
The timing is the key pressure point. Smollett had just called off his engagement to Redd after a three-year relationship, so any affectionate appearance now carries a different weight than it would have a few months ago. Brown brings his own recent relationship history into the frame as well, having been previously engaged to director Ian Jordan for 10 years and later dating photographer Carlos Medel until that breakup in February 2025.
That context does not prove a new couple, but it does explain why the outing landed as more than routine celebrity sighting. Smollett’s personal life has already been public property for years, especially after he was accused of staging a fake hate crime in 2019 and later faced a 2021 conviction on five felony counts of disorderly conduct before The Supreme Court of Illinois overturned it without ruling on innocence.
Are Smollett and Brown Dating
For now, the public record is simple: Smollett and Brown were seen together, they were affectionate, and they spent part of Monday with Brown’s mom in Los Angeles. That is enough to drive the romance chatter; it is not enough to close the case on whether the two have moved from a public outing into an actual relationship.
The next move belongs to them. If they want to turn Monday’s lunch, errands, and Runyon Canyon hike into something more than a sighting, they will have to say so themselves; until then, the clearest reading is that Los Angeles gave the pair a very public first chapter and left the rest unwritten.
