dpCortez Smith doesn’t play about his clothes. The man behind Nuck, the cunning and savvy leader of the 63rd Street Mob on the longrunning hit Showtime series “The Chi,” is also a fashion savant. Inspired by the fashions of his uncle, mother and grandmother back in the day, Smith showed up to The TRiiBE Studio with a garment bag full of pieces from his new clothing line, Eros Christian.
“It’s, like, half fashion mixed with streetwear. I love denim and I love leather, and I collage the two worlds together. That’s what creates my brand,” Smith told The TRiiBE about Eros Christian, which he launched in May. Sometimes, Smith said, he prefers to wear his own clothes on set, a piece of himself which shines through his portrayal of Nuck on screen.
“I have a crocodile skin jacket — one of my favorites. It took a long time to perfect it because the hide of a crocodile is dried out a little bit, so it takes a lot of processing to get it to shape how you want it,” Smith said about the jacket he’s rocking in our cover photo. “The lining of the jacket is red, to have that pop in the mix with that black, man, it gives it an electrifying feel.”
Smith is reminiscing about his time on “The Chi,” a gritty drama based and set in Chicago that centers love, loyalty, and life on the city’s South and West sides. Now in its 8th and final season, which premiered on May 22, the show will conclude with its final episode airing on Paramount + on July 24.
“After ‘The Chi’ wraps up, there’s gonna be, like, a hole in the universe of television. It’s gonna leave a hole,” Smith said about the ending of a show that strived to capture the essence of being Black in Chicago.
Authenticity is one of the biggest throughlines of “The Chi.” A good chunk of the cast and crew hail from the city. Smith, a West Side native, made his debut as “Nuck” in season 3, which aired in 2019 — just before the 2020 Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike left him discouraged and out of work.
