Like many people, John Travolta remembers where he was when O.J. Simpson was riding in a white Ford Bronco in that slow-speed pursuit in 1994 before he surrendered to police and later faced murder charges in the deaths of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman, her friend.
“I had just gotten back from the Cannes Film Festival where we won the Palme d’Or for Pulp Fiction. I was on this kind of high with a new career and then this American tragedy was happening,” the actor said on Monday at a red carpet for Fox’s Upfront event, where networks debut their new TV shows for advertisers.
Travolta, Cuba Gooding Jr, David Schwimmer and Sarah Paulson have signed on to star in a new true-crime anthology series coming to FX called American Crime Story.
Season one is to focus on the Simpson trial and is based on a book by Jeffrey Toobin, who covered the trial extensively for The New Yorker.
Travolta plays Simpson attorney Robert Shapiro. Ryan Murphy is directing the series, now about a week into filming.
“That trial sort of gave birth to a new kind of media coverage,” Murphy said. “It felt like an origin story of something that was the first, and now we are still dealing with the reverberations of that, so it feels very modern to me.”
Gooding plays Simpson, the pro NFL Hall-of-Famer and actor.
“People keep asking me whether I think he did it or not, and I do not think that is the goal here, to prove his innocence or his guilt,” Gooding said. “I think it is more us putting the judicial system under the spotlight... We try to find a truth in the moment so that we can find answers. I think this 10 hours of television is gonna be very powerful, and I think a lot of people are going to learn a lot.”
David Schwimmer portrays the late Robert Kardashian, an attorney on Simpson’s defense team and a loyal defender of the former star.
He said he spoke to Kardashian’s ex-wife, Kris Jenner, for insight into the role.
“I was lucky enough to speak to [Jenner] for a few hours, who was very generous with her time,” he said.
American Crime Story is to premiere on FX next year.
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