Jurnee Smollett Gained 20 Pounds Of Muscle For Her ‘Smoke’ Role—Here’s Her Exact Workout Plan

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Actor Jurnee Smollett’s fitness journey (*wink*) began like so many other kids’ who grew up in the ’90s—sweating to her mom’s Jane Fonda workout tapes. But the 38-year-old says she really got serious about her routine when, as a new mom to son Hunter, she was cast as hero Black Canary in the 2020 movie Birds of Prey.

“My joints were feeling really wobbly. I nursed Hunter for a very long time, so my body was really depleted of a lot of important nutrients. That’s really where I started focusing on my strength training,” she tells Women’s Health in the latest installment of Strong Like.

When she was cast as former Marine Michelle Calderone in the Apple TV+ series Smoke (streaming now), she enlisted the trainer she worked with for Birds of Prey, Jeanette Jenkins, to help build the strength and physique she needed to convincingly embody the character.

“We started lifting heavier and heavier and heavier, and she just kept pushing me beyond the limits that I thought I could do,” Jurnee says. The results? The actor put on 20 pounds of pure muscle during the course of their training. Here’s a peek into what that badass, muscle-building routine looks like:

First things first, Jeanette and Jurnee start their sessions with a little yoga flow to limber up the body. “I always have to stretch prior and after,” Jurnee says. “My body truly needs some sort of warming up.”

From there, they’ll work on activating the glutes, performing squatted abductions with a resistance band around the legs.

“So many people will do heavy deadlifts, heavy squats, and they’ll feel a lot of the work in the quads, and they won’t necessarily feel it in the glutes,” Jeanette explains. “We just want to make sure glutes are fired before we go into the heavy lift.”

With the glutes in the game, Jurnee begins her leg-heavy workout with deadlifts. Jurnee admits that when she first started strength-training, she couldn’t even deadlift 50 pounds. Now she can lift more than her body weight. (Go girl!)

comparison of fitness progress before and after weightlifting — Hearst Owned

Next come sumo squats—another glute burner—followed by hip thrusts. From there, Jurnee goes back to deadlifts—this time as a single-leg deadlift. “I like doing this because I really feel the glutes,” she says. “We come back to the glutes, because that’s what we like to build—let’s face it.”

Rounding out the booty focus, Jeanette has Jurnee finish on the cable machine, doing kickbacks and leg lifts.

“What’s really great about the cables is that you have to stabilize it yourself,” Jeanette says. “When you’re on a machine, and you’re pushing the machine back, you don’t have to stabilize it.” That stability work, says Jeanette, helps fire up the glutes and legs even more. And also helps give you the buns of a former Marine, apparently!

Learn more about Jurnee’s 20 lb. muscle gain by watching Strong Like above.