From ‘Saturday Night Live’ to ‘The People vs OJ Simpson’ – the movies, appearances and interviews that capture the controversial star

Man who gained notoriety in trial that stunned world was ingrained in American culture

OJ Simpson, who died on Wednesday aged 76, was a striking presence in American pop culture for more than 50 years – as a star college football and NFL player; as a movie star, advertising pitchman and sports broadcaster; as a celebrity bogeyman after the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman, for which he was charged; and as an avatar of black Americans’ distrust of the police during his circus-like murder trial and acquittal.

Then he was something grimmer: the man found financially liable for Brown and Goldman’s deaths in a civil trial, the co-author of a purportedly speculative book called If I Did It that described the killings; and a felon, sentenced to 33 years for kidnapping and armed robbery. Released after nine, he reinvented himself in his final years as a discomfiting influencer, weighing in on social media about everything from football to the media to former president Donald Trump.

What to make of this life? You could start with some primary and secondary sources: the films in which Simpson appeared, the documentaries and dramatisations that captured his most infamous episodes; the ephemera of that trial. Here’s our guide.

Early acting roles

Simpson’s acting career started in 1968 with uncredited bit parts in television shows and movies, just before his NFL career got under way.

His popularity on the field would secure him bigger roles in movies such as The Klansman, The Towering Inferno, Killer Force ,C apricorn One and Fire Power. He dabbled in made-for-television movies, too, including Goldie and the Boxer (and its sequel), A Killing Affair (one of Simpson’s highly praised performances) and Student Exchange. He even appeared in one episode of the groundbreaking 1977 miniseries Roots as an African tribesman.

‘SNL’

As Simpson’s football career was drawing to a close, and with acting credits in The Towering Inferno and The Cassandra Crossing under his belt, Simpson became the second athlete to host Saturday Night Live, which he did on February 25, 1978.

Most notably in the episode, Simpson was dressed as a conehead for his opening monologue and played the brother of John Belushi’s Samurai Futaba character in a “Samurai Night Fever” skit.

‘The Naked Gun’

Simpson’s fame brought him a starring role in the Naked Gun franchise, an ’80s comedic take on police action movies. In the three films, Simpson played the unlucky Detective Fred Nordberg, who finds himself in painful situations but often proves invincible.

The Ross Becker interview

“This has nothing to do with race!” OJ Simpson said in this long conversation with Ross Becker. It wasn’t the first post-trial interview with Simpson to air, but it made waves for a reason: Simpson produced and sold it. Becker was hired for the project after he quit his anchorman job at KCOP-TV Channel 13 in Los Angeles, citing his objections to “sold-out, disgusting, tabloid” journalism.

In the interview, which could be ordered for $30 by calling 1-800-OJTELLS, Becker asked Simpson directly about his guilt, details of the case and his alibi. Simpson also discusses his relationship with Paula Barbieri and criticises the media for making the case about race before claiming he had a broad basis of support.

The ‘Time’ magazine cover

After his arrest, both Newsweek and Time put Simpson’s mug shot on their covers. But Time hired Matt Mahurin, a progenitor of the then-arcane practice of computerassisted photo illustration, to doctor the photo. Time’s version was rendered with noticeably darker skin than Newsweek’s. You didn’t have to be a race theorist or media expert to see a problem. For some, the cover confirmed widespread media bias against black people in criminal reporting, this time rendered overtly.

Books

Seemingly every person involved in the Simpson trial wound up writing a book about it: defence lawyers Robert Shapiro and Johnnie Cochran and prosecutors Christopher Darden and Marcia Clark.

Then there was the sordid saga around the publication of Simpson’s If I Did It, first cancelled by Harper-Collins and ultimately released in an edition including commentary from Goldman’s family and Simpson’s ghostwriter, Pablo Fenjves.

Jeffrey Toobin’s The Run of His Life: The People vs. OJ Simpson is widely considered the definitive account, expanding on his reporting for the New Yorker – including his revelatory findings about the racism of LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman.

Some critics remarked on the gap between the book’s criticisms of the prosecution and Toobin’s more flattering portrayal of Clark in his profile of her at the time.

Still, this cynical, comprehensive view into the lawyers’ strategies remains the first, best way to learn about how the trial unfolded.

Television

In 2016, FX’s American Crime Story anthology series launched with The People v OJ Simpson, a 10-episode season starring Cuba Gooding Jr as the accused. The courtroom drama, based on Toobin’s book, delved into both the actual case and the thorny internal politics of each legal team.

The series could skew a bit camp and over-the-top at times, as you might expect of anything produced by Ryan Murphy; those who followed the online fervour might recall an unhinged supercut of David Schwimmer’s Robert Kardashian yelling his nickname for Simpson: “Juice!” But it also earned acclaim for sharp writing and layered acting, landing the Emmy for outstanding limited series.

‘OJ Made in America’

ESPN’s award-winning documentary, from director Ezra Edelman, walked audiences through the story of Simpson – from football star to murder suspect. The five-part series revisited Simpson’s impact on rising racial tension in Los Angeles in the ’90s and his marriage to Nicole Brown. The documentary takes audiences through the whirlwind of a legal drama, detailing the domestic abuse allegations against him, Brown’s murder scene, the police investigation, the famous white Ford Bronco chase, the trial, before ending on his jail sentence in 2008.

Social media

In his final incarnation, Simpson became a dedicated commentator through Twitter video posts on the topics he knew best: football and high-profile legal cases.

Often seated next to a pool or at a sports bar, Simpson would open with “Hey Twitter-world, it’s me, yours truly,” before launching into a warning to, say, Trump that he shouldn’t do interviews about his classified-documents charges.

Simpson used his trial experience to predict that South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh would be found guilty. “Down goes Murdaugh!” a chuckling Simpson said after Murdaugh was found guilty of murdering his wife and son. “I’m just saying!” (© Washington Post)