Scroll down for all the Fact v. Fiction for Episode 2, “The Run of His Life”
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Even as it was unfolding two decades ago and it was obvious that never before had something gripped America’s fascination quite like the O.J. Simpson murder trial, who could have possibly thought that watching it unfold all over again 20 years later would be so entertaining?
A coarse word, entertainment, considering the subject matter. But good lord, is American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson not downright captivating?!
Watching the series premiere last week felt strangely familiar, like watching the movie version of a book you know well—even though you may not have read any of the dozen books written about the case (such as O.J.’s own If I Did It or the series’ source material, Jeffrey Toobin‘s The Run of His Life) or even tuned in in real time for any of the drama that unfolded between June 12, 1994, when Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were killed, and Oct. 3, 1995, when O.J. was found not guilty of their murders.
FX has touted the 10-episode anthology series as being the real account of what went down, including behind-the-scenes details that you’ve never heard before.
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But it’s also a TV show full of actors, including John Travolta devouring the scenery as defense attorney Robert Shapiro and Ross from Friends portraying Simpson confidante and attorney Robert Kardashian, so who’s to know what really happened and what’s been added to spice up (or streamline) the proceedings?
“This series is not a documentary,” Toobin, who’s a consultant on the series, has explained. “It is not a word-for-word recreation. But in terms of the essential truths of the events, in terms of the insights into the characters, it is brilliant and everyone will learn a lot and be entertained a lot.”
That’s for damn sure. But since you’re watching a show based on a true-story-plus-embellishments, we’re here to separate the facts from the flourishes. And don’t worry about us stealing any thunder from the plot, because what’s true is still truly unbelievable.
Episode 1: “From the Ashes of Tragedy”
After a montage depicting the L.A. riots in the aftermath of the Rodney King beating verdict gives context to the LAPD’s tense relationship with the city’s African-American community in the mid-1990s, the series starts off with O.J. being picked up by a limo at his Rockingham estate to go to the airport. He apologizes for being late. Cut to a neighbor, who’s out walking his dog, finding Nicole and Ron’s bodies in the front courtyard of her Brentwood condo after seeing Nicole’s Akita and noticing its paws were covered in blood (in real life the discovery did involve the Akita, but the dog first followed the neighbor home, then led his neighbors to the scene).
The episode proceeds to chronicle how the LAPD identified O.J. as a suspect, the early role longtime O.J. pal Kardashian (David Schwimmer) played before he was asked to join the disgraced football hero’s defense team and how Shapiro was hired (a TV executive called him, not Kardashian). We’re introduced to Johnny Cochran (Courtney B. Vance), who wants nothing to do with the case (Cochran later denied calling the case “a loser” but it’s in the book); prosecutor Marcia Clark (Sarah Paulson), who’s going through a divorce and is on hairstyle No. 1; frustrated assistant prosecutor Christopher Darden (Sterling K. Brown), who looks at Cochran as a mentor; infamous O.J. house guest Kato Kaelin (Billy Magnussen); and LAPD Detective Mark Fuhrman (Steven Pasquale), who spots blood inside and on the door of a white Bronco parked outside Simpson’s home, as well as finds a black leather glove on the property that looks like one found near Ron Goldman’s body.
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Upon his return from Chicago, O.J. gives a rambling, disjointed account to police of his actions that night, including how he got a cut on his thumb. He later fails a lie-detector test, scoring a minus-24. “Shapiro calls it “the worst you can do.” Kardashian reassures a defensive O.J., “This was just for us, it doesn’t mean anything.”
Nicole’s friends Faye Resnick (Connie Britton) and Kris Jenner (Selma Blair) recall during her funeral how she was “terrified” of O.J. and had hidden away pictures documenting his past abuse in case something happened to her. The episode ends with O.J. fleeing Robert Kardashian’s house in his white Bronco, being driven by Al Cowlings (Malcolm-Jamal Warner) as Clark laments that he’s going to make them “look like morons.”
Overall, the series seems poised to show how detectives and the D.A.’s office steadily put together what they thought was a slam-dunk case…and then watched it disintegrate before their eyes.
Hard to Believe: Hiding out at Kardashian’s house (the show uses the late attorney’s actual former home), O.J. handwrites a letter to his mother, a letter to his kids, a statement to his fans and a will before he’s supposed to turn himself in to police. Kardashian finds O.J. in his study with a gun, and O.J. proceeds to walk up the stairs and into Kim Kardashian‘s childhood bedroom, complete with Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Joey Lawrence posters. “O.J., please do not kill yourself in Kimmy’s bedroom,” Kardashian pleads with him. That was surely put in for effect, a wink at Kim’s present-day fame?
Fact or Fiction? FACT, for the most part. Robert recalled to Barbara Walters in 1996 confronting O.J., who was looking at pictures of his children and had a gun wrapped in a towel. “In the book it says you said to him,’ You can’t kill yourself, this is my daughter’s room,'” Walters recalled a line from the 1996 book American Tragedy: The Uncensored Story of the Simpson Defense. “I said,” Kardashian concurred, “‘O.J., I could never walk in this room. My daughter couldn’t sleep in this bed, she’d know what happened here.'”
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Hard to Believe: While the forensics team is collecting evidence at Nicole’s condo, the phone rings and daughter Sydney leaves a tearful message from the police station pleading with her mom to “please answer.” Immediately we wondered who in the hell was letting 8-year-old Sydney Simpson call Nicole, knowing damn well what was going on?! Couldn’t be real, right?
Fact or Fiction? FACT. While Toobin doesn’t specify who first discovered Sydney’s message, he wrote that she did leave a message on the home phone “at some point.”
We Had Totally Blocked Out: The fact that Justin and Sydney Simpson were upstairs sleeping in the house when their mother was killed, and that a woman named Jill Shively had told police that a white Bronco had almost crashed into her car on the night of the murders and that the agitated driver was O.J. Simpson. A 2014 Dateline special revealed that Clark never put Shively on the stand because she was mad at her for selling her story to Hard Copy.
Nitpicks:
-Kardashian, who’s being painted as the voice of reason, wasn’t the one to tell O.J. he needed a more hardcore defense attorney and call Robert Shapiro, who’s lunching at Mr. Chow when he gets the call in the show. In reality, TV exec Roger King stepped in and called Shapiro, who was actually at House of Blues.
-Marcia Clark had to cancel going to a bridal shower she was throwing, she didn’t forget about a friend’s baby shower. (It’s far bitchier to forget about a baby shower, though.)
-There’s video of young Kim and Kourtney Kardashian at Nicole’s funeral in real life, but who’s to say whether Kris had to scold Khloe and Kourtney for horsing around, telling them to put away the candy, as she does in the show? Hmmm…
Episode 2: “The Run of His Life”
The episode takes its name/football metaphor from the title of Toobin’s aforementioned book and focuses entirely on the infamous white Bronco chase on June 17, 1994. Episode 1 left off with Kardashian and Shapiro realizing that O.J. was in the wind, just as LAPD officers arrived to take him into custody. While on the road, a couple of looky-loos in a VW van came face to face with Cowlings and excitedly pulled over to alert California Highway Patrol at a roadside phone (because their van wasn’t equipped with the type of massive car phone that Al and O.J. used in the Bronco).
As the infamously low-speed chase went on, the series depicts how seemingly the entire country tuned in—partly because they had no choice, as even NBC opted to relegate the NBA Finals into a corner while Tom Brokaw covered the action on the majority of the screen (fact and fact).
Knowing because of Cowlings’ call to 911 that O.J. was in a bad state of mind, the networks started putting together obituary packages for the football great, and ultimately one aired, having quickly been converted to a regular montage that noticeably resembled a eulogy. Ultimately Cowlings drove O.J. back to his Rockingham Avenue home in Brentwood (“We’re goin’ to Brentwood!” he authoritatively informs a detective beforehand) and the cops—aided by Kardashian, who along with O.J.’s eldest son, Jason, were the only two not evacuated from the house—got O.J. to leave his gun in the car and walk inside. (True, but he and Al didn’t sit in the car till it turned dark. O.J. surrendered less than an hour upon their return.)
In what was concluded to be Simpson’s travel bag, they found O.J.’s passport; a loaded .357 Smith & Wesson handgun registered to a cop friend of O.J.’s; and, in a plastic bag, a fake goatee, a fake mustache and makeup adhesive remover.
Extra Factual: The interweaving of real news footage and pop culture tidbits from the time, including the VW couple blasting the Beastie Boys‘ “Sabotage” (brand new in 1994), Chris Darden’s dad’s insistence that they continue watching golf (Arnold Palmer‘s final U.S. Open), Brokaw anchoring the chase coverage for NBC and Bob Costas promising updates during the basketball game (before the game was shafted for the chase). More props for the scene of a pizza place running out of cheese due to all the orders from people glued to their TVs. Domino’s would say that they received a Super Bowl-like number of orders that day.
Hard to Believe: Before they see what’s happening on TV, Robert Kardashian tells O.J.’s family, who were assembled at the fugitive’s house, that “we have reason to believe that he’s killed himself…O.J.’s in a better place.”
Fact or Fiction: FICTION, as far as anyone who wasn’t in that house knows. It certainly seems wildly irresponsible for Kardashian to have said that, and then the chase comes on the TV and his daughter Arnelle (Ariel D. King) goes, “No, wait, look!”
Hard to Believe: While O.J. was purportedly trying to figure out the right place to end it all and the L.A. District Attorney’s Office was doing its best to save face, Shapiro hashed a plan to excuse himself of any complicity in O.J.’s decision to run, he had Kardashian read O.J.’s suicide note—signed with a happy face punctuating the “O” in “O.J.”—at their press conference.
Fact or Fiction: FACT, for all intents and purposes. The show shortens the note, which in reality was riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, but Kardashian—wearing a similar suit and flowered tie as the one Schwimmer’s Kardashian wears—really did read it, despite the fact that it sounded like the words of a guilty man.
Hard to Believe: That Cowlings drove O.J. to the Orange County cemetery where Nicole was laid to rest before the Bronco chase really got underway.
Fact or Fiction: FICTION. At least no one who’s studied or had anything to do with the case has officially confirmed this took place.
Hard to Believe: That it got that intense in the Bronco, with O.J. really holding a gun to his head and wailing and raving during a series of phone calls, including one to Kardashian, to whom he mentions a number of people—including fellow USC turned NFL star Marcus Allen—to say goodbye to. He ended up talking to Det. Tom Lange about surrendering, saying of his gun, “It’s not for you…it’s for me. I gotta be with Nicole, that’s all I’m trying to do.”
Fact or Fiction: FACT. Though it’s unclear what exactly Kardashian said to O.J., he later indicated to Barbara Walters that they spoke during the chase. “By taking him around the house, I know I saved his life,” the attorney said about talking O.J. out of harming himself at Kardashian’s home. “I also think I did in the Bronco, as well as A.C. [Cowlings]. A.C. definitely saved his life.”
Bonus Fact: O.J. did mention Allen in his real-life suicide note, the one Kardashian read on TV. Toobin points out how odd that was considering Allen had an on-and-off affair with Nicole. O.J. at least forgave Allen, because the football star later got married at O.J.’s Rockingham estate.
Another Bonus Fact: They didn’t even show how weird it got in that car! Bob Costas recently revealed that Simpson tried to call him during the chase—at home and his usual studio, but he was at Madison Square Garden for game 5 of Rockets vs. Knicks.
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Hard to Believe: When Kardashian appears on TV to read the suicide note, young Kim, Khloe, Kourtney and Rob get so excited watching him at home that they start cheering, obviously not paying attention to what he’s reading.
Fact or Fiction: FICTION. You know, as far as anyone knows. We’re assuming the idea to have the future reality-TV stars chanting “Kar-dash-i-an! Kar-dash-i-an!” when their dad concludes his somber appearance was just too wickedly delicious for the show’s creative team to pass up.
READ: What if the infamous Bronco chase happened today?
We Had Totally Blocked Out: That the white Bronco of the chase wasn’t the Bronco police found blood on. As it’s mentioned in the show, Al Cowlings purposely bought the same car as his friend and idol.
Artistic License:
–To get the point across, District Attorney Gil Garcetti (Bruce Greenwood) calls June 17 the worst day of his life. “It’s worse than the day I was diagnosed with cancer.” In reality he didn’t make such a pronouncement, but the series wants to paint a more detailed picture of Garcetti, who is a cancer survivor. His rueful, “I thought I was gonna run for mayor” comment is a wink at the fact that his son, Eric Garcetti, is currently mayor of Los Angeles.
-Same goes for the conversation Chris Darden has with his neighbor about football great turned actor Jim Brown‘s contributions to the black community vs. O.J.’s reluctance to use his celebrity to advance any social causes. Toobin’s book juxtaposes the two, so this is the show’s way of including that point.
-Marcia Clark was a smoker, but Sarah Paulson smoking cigarettes in the office at every turn is just for effect. In reality, the California Indoor Clean Air Act of 1996 would have precluded her from doing that. Or at least it should have.
Check back next week for the Fact v. Fiction rundown for Episode 3, “The Dream Team,” premiering next Tuesday, Feb. 16, at 10 p.m. on FX
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