FX's The People v. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story isn't going to offer a conclusive stance on whether OJ Simpson did or did not kill his ex-wife Nicole Brown, even though the book on which it's based, Jeffrey Toobin's The Run of His Life: The People v. OJ Simpson, feels that Simpson deserved a "guilty" verdict.

The cast and creative team behind FX's latest anthology series took to the 2016 winter Television Critics Association press tour stage to discuss the dramatic telling of the iconic and controversial OJ Simpson case. Underlining that they strove for the most truthful, responsible and balanced representation of all sides of the case, the writers said the point of the show was to explain to the audience why the "not guilty" verdict was delivered.

"We wanted you to understand the verdict," co-writer and executive producer Larry Karaszewski said. "It's about the unraveling certainty. ... You could just see it kind of slipping through the prosecution's fingers, and that's sort of what the show is about."

The all-star ensemble cast brings to live the people pivotal to the case, including Cuba Gooding Jr. as OJ, Courtney B. Vance as Johnnie Cochran, Sarah Paulson as Marcia Clark, John Travolta as Robert Shapiro, David Schwimmer as Robert Kardashian and Sterling K. Brown as Christopher Darden. The opening of the series shines a light on the LA Riots, then jumps forward two years to begin the telling of the Simpson case starting on the night of the murder. Different episodes focus on various elements of the trial -- one is about the Bronco chase, another is about Marcia Clark's infamous perm, and one is from the perspective of the jury -- in order to give the audience a full picture of the circumstances surrounding and informing the trial.

Toobin, who was present at the trial and whose book is a work of journalism to explore the case, was present during the process of bringing The People v. OJ Simpson to the small screen and helped writers Karaszewski and Scott Alexander and executive producers Ryan Murphy, Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson dramatize an authentic version of real life events. Though some circumstances were condensed for the sake of telling a story in a single episode, the core of the piece stays true to recountings from the time of the trial. Schwimmer said that the production even shot key scenes at Robert Kardashian's actual house at the time of the Bronco chase, and Toobin vouched for the courtroom being an "eerie" recreation of the real setting.


"It is not a documentary, but just from my perspective, I was so astonished and impressed by the commitment of these people to try to get the essential truth of this story," Toobin said. "The authenticity of the script, of the performances, of the narrative is breathtaking to me."

Among the characters featured in the first few episodes are portrayals of young Kim, Kourtney, Khloe and Rob Kardashian, and they're depicted as being already being concerned about fame -- characterizations sure to start at least a few conversations when the series premieres.

Writer Scott Alexander explained the kids were there "just for a little sprinkling" because he felt "they were sort of emblematic of the beginning of this era ... where people were famous, and you weren't really sure why they were famous." Murphy added that too much focus on those scenes misses the point. Noting that only four or five scenes out of American Crime Story's 10 hours feature the Kardashian Children, Murphy said, "I think that gives you a grasp on how important we thought they were to the story."

Murphy said the scripts and production of the first season of American Crime Story have had more legal vetting than any project he's ever worked on. At least five lawyers went over every script, and the production would then have to provide research to them in order to authenticate their plot points. Beyond having Toobin's book on hand, each of the actors referenced the book written by their respective real life characters so they could portray those peoples' experiences from their actual perspectives. The actors and creative team did not pursue meeting with the real people involved in the case, though Paulson admitted she came to "really revere" Marcia Clark.


Gooding decided against going to meet and talk with Simpson in prison because he didn't want to see him "as a shell of a man." Instead, he researched Simpson from his prime in the early and mid-'90s. Gooding also decided against sharing to reporters whether or not he thinks Simpson is guilty, explaining "the question of his guilt is my personal opinion, and I don't want that to be reflected in my performance" and adding that he doesn't judge his characters.

"I have to give him a blank slate and let [Murphy] paint in it in the editing room, so you want to give him as many choice as you can. There is a little bit of fear when I hear something definitive one way or another because I don't want it to influence my psyche too much," Gooding said. "This was probably the hardest character I've ever played. ... I go back and forth from week to week. Each script that would come in would give me more information -- stuff that was admissible or not admissible -- and I'd go maybe he did it, maybe he didn't do it."

He continued, "If we have you watch these 10 episodes whether you think he's innocent or guilty and you say, 'I still think whatever, but I know how they came up with that verdict,' then we did our job."

Tonally, Murphy said he looked to projects like All the President's Men as inspiration for the urgent pacing of the episodes. Of the recent rise of mass-consumed true crime series, like The Jinx and Making a Murderer, executive producer Brad Simpson believes that people are interested in seeing "the ways in which the justice system might be flawed." "I think people are interested in injustice right now," he said.

Though the OJ Simpson case took over pop culture after Brown was murdered in 1994, there is a new generation of people who will be learning about the details of the trial for the first time when they watch American Crime Story. "I kind of think that [the show is] for them, in a real sense," Vance said. "I'm really excited to hear what they think, somebody who wasn't born with it."


Even people who were alive and aware of the trial will be able to find new things that they didn't know about the case in this telling of the story. Murphy, who felt he knew everything there was to know about OJ Simpson, said there was "literally something from every script that was new to me." The producers also are struck by how the stories about race and the judicial being told here feel "torn from the headlines," as Karaszewski put it, of recent events like the protests in Ferguson.

"Even in the era of the internet, we've never had a phenomenon like OJ," executive producer Nina Jacobson said. "We needed time and distance to be able to come back and look at it a from a character perspective where you could really have compassion and emotional access to these characters and not just react to what you think they stood for. People are always wanting to reassure themselves -- I think white people in particular -- that these racial earthquakes that are behind us, but the fault lines that are exposed by them are still there. People want to brush them under the rug. It may take time before people are able to raise the subject again. Right now is a time when people are at least able to converse on the subject."