Jussie Smollett is ticking items off the successful-entertainer checklist.

>> Hit TV show? “Empire,” the Fox drama in which he stars as a member of a fractured family running a hip-hop music label, is going strong in Season 3 after finishing its first two seasons in Nielsen’s top five.

>> Big-budget action movie? Smollett has wrapped “Alien: Covenant” with Oscar-nominated director Ridley Scott, due out in August.

>> Prestige historical drama? The 33-year-old plays writer Langston Hughes in “Marshall,” a biopic about the late Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court justice.

>> Cooking show? He and his five siblings, last seen together on the ’90s sitcom “On Our Own,” debuted “Smollett Eats” in August on the Food Network. (One of his sisters, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, is an actor in her own right and had a recurring role in the TV series “Friday Night Lights.”)

>> Hit record? The Season 1 soundtrack to “Empire,” featuring Smollett on four songs, entered the charts at No. 1 in March 2015.

>> Sharing the stage with the most successful female singer of all time? That’s next when he comes to Hawaii this week for three shows on Mariah Carey’s “Sweet Sweet Fantasy Tour” at Blaisdell Arena.

Smollett will open for Carey and … well, he won’t say any more beyond that.

“I don’t know what I can say about Mariah’s actual … what Mariah will be a part of,” Smollett said in a phone conversation last week from a rehearsal in Los Angeles, “so I’ll just shut up about that.”

With Carey featuring male vocalists on so many of her hits — “One Sweet Day,” “I’ll Be There” and “#Beautiful” among them — plus “Infamous,” which the pair premiered last month when Carey guested on “Empire,” it’s not hard to imagine him joining her for a song or two.

Add that this will be his first trip to Hawaii — “I’m so excited,” he says over and over again, slowing at times for effect — and Smollett’s life is pretty good right now. (Well, except for one thing, but we’ll get to that later.)

Smollett and Carey met through “Empire” co-creator Lee Daniels, who directed Carey in the 2009 film “Precious.”

“She and Lee Daniels are like, they’re really, really close,” Smollett said, “and she asked if I could introduce her at the Human Rights Campaign gala. … We’ve just been cool ever since.”

They talked about him joining her for some shows on the European and South African legs of the “Fantasy” tour, but the scheduling didn’t work out. So the three Hawaii dates are the only ones that will feature Smollett.

THOUGH he’s been friends with Carey for less than two years, the impact she’s had on him is unmistakable, even through the phone line. Smollett is effusive in laying out how giving she has been with her time and industry knowledge.

“She’s just a really, really kind woman. She hasn’t had to be as supportive as she has been, but she’s just been wonderful.”

Smollett has also had the good fortune to have strong mentors in his acting life in Daniels, who he says is “like my second father,” and Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson, who play conniving parents Lucious and Cookie Lyon to Smollett’s sweet-natured Jamal Lyon on “Empire.”

“They’ve become like that crazy aunt and uncle or crazy big brother and big sister that you have. They’re insanely perfect. They are two of the most genuine people,” Smollett said.

The support he feels on the set extends throughout the creative staff, who helped put a little bit of Smollett into Jamal, a smooth, sensitive R&B singer/songwriter in contrast to the rap/hip-hop edge of his younger TV sibling and sometimes rival Hakeem (Bryshere Y. Gray).

One thing Smollett shares with his “Empire” character is that both are gay. Jamal is the highest-profile gay character in broadcast network TV, and his sexuality has provided a number of plot lines, most involving Lucious Lyon’s unwillingness to accept his son and homophobia in the hip-hop music industry.

WHAT THE “Empire” writers also put in Jamal that so resembles Smollett is his social consciousness.

This is where the one thing in Smollett’s life that is not going well comes in.

He has been outspoken on the recent presidential election and worked to get out the vote for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in North Carolina, a battleground state where he spoke at churches and colleges, he said.

“I’m very aware that we are now in a time where it’s easy to prey on people’s fears, and it’s easy to really capitalize off of that, and I think that’s what the president-elect (Donald Trump) has done,” Smollett said. “And I think that that is how in a very corrupt, horrible way, he has convinced people that in order to be powerful you have to be mean, you have to be hateful, you have to oppress.”

Smollett said Americans have become “numb to bullying” thanks to the current political climate and certain reality TV shows that encourage mean-spirited and snarky behavior.

“You can say so many things and you can get a point across without being mean. You can be a boss, you can be successful. You can be all of those things, and you can be kind as well.”