The People vs. O.J. Simpson

"She did admit to bringing Simpson his passport and thousands of dollars while he was hiding out at the home of lawyer Robert Kardashian..."

 

That was Paula Barbieri in bed with OJ

 

Yes, there is a doubt.

 

Is this show about OJ or the Kardashians?

 

Watched first four this weekend and I'm really liking it.

As others have written, the Travolta caricature is really off putting. And I didn't realize the Kardasian and Clark kids had a bigger role than the Simpson children.

 

I don't know if it's because I just don't like Travolta, but that role is so distracting. I don't know much about Shapiro other than what I saw on TV back then, and I'm sure he's quite an asshole, but I can't imagine he's the incompetent psycho Travolta is portraying.

 

The worst part about Travolta as Shapiro is that he TOWERS over Gooding as O.J. The elevator scene at the end of the last episode showed that.

I mean, they totally blew it with the O.J. casting. Gooding's too small and has a squeaky voice. But I guess the producers figured he could play a convincing NFL wide receiver in Jerry Maguire (albeit sharing most scenes with Lilliputian Tom Cruise), so he could play O.J.

The question is ... who would have been better as O.J.? Guys like Forest Whitaker, Ving Rhames and Dennis Haysbert or either too old or not handsome enough. Terence Howard is the right age, but also has a soft voice and doesn't really look like an athlete. Same with Don Cheadle, who's also too small.

I've really put some thought into this, and short of casting an unknown, I figure the two best candidates would be Will Smith and Laurence Fishburne (though Fishburne's also a bit old and maybe not handsome enough). Smith played Ali, so he could do Simpson.

Anybody else I'm not thinking of?

 

Travolta as Shapiro reminds me of Little Steven on The Sopranos, it looks like he's always mugging for the camera.

 

I think some OJ CGI would have worked better.

 

How about somebody who fit the part, but maybe didn't have name recognition?

 

They could have cast an unknown, but that doesn't seem like what the producers of this miniseries wanted to do. Outside of the guy playing Christopher Darden, just about everyone in the main cast is a fairly big name who if not an A-lister has at least been a TV series regular at some point.

A guy I think would have been a great fit for O.J. is Roger Guenveur Smith, who is known mostly for his work as a part of the ensemble in several Spike Lee movies. He's too old (60), but could probably play late-40s O.J. if he died his hair.

 

The producers said one reason they cast Cuba was that he has a similar public persona today that OJ did back then. If you say on the news Cuba Gooding was accused of murder it would be as shocking, at least that was their idea. He's been good enough that after an episode or two I didn't really pay attention to the lack of resemblance. Travolta is just distracting everytime he's on screen.