‘The People v. O.J. Simpson,’ Episode 2: Our Fact-Checking Recap
Until the summer of 1994, O.J. Simpson was best known for his speed on the field — which is ironic, given how the run he would ultimately become most famous for wasn’t particularly fast at all. The second installment of The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story revisits the scandal’s most iconic moment: The Juice in that white Ford Bronco, driving down the freeway with life-long friend Al Cowlings (played by Malcolm-Jamal Warner) at the wheel, a revolver held to his head in the back seat, and news copters and the cops in hot pursuit. The episode ends with Simpson’s surrender to a swarm of police at his home, with everyone nervous that he might just pull that trigger and end it all. The script sticks close to its source material, New Yorker writer Jeffery Toobin’s 1996 book The Run of His Life, but like always, they took a little dramatic license. Check out these five details from Episode Two, fact-checked and rated on a one-to-five “Gloves” scale for accuracy.
The suicide note
As O.J. and A.C. went on the run, Robert Kardashian took the podium at the defense’s June 17th press conference to read what seemed to be a suicide note from Orenthal James Simpson. “First, everyone understand I had nothing to do with Nicole’s murder,” Kardashian read. But what he had written was much more ambiguous: “First everyone understand nothing to do with Nicole’s murder.” The opening seemed to be written under extreme duress — that, or Simpson was nearly illiterate. So Kardashian edited the note as he went along, potentially changing its meaning and certainly obfuscating the man’s desperation.
It was actually signed, as the series acknowledges, with a morbid smiley face for the “O” in his name. But the show plays into a misconception: Robert Shapiro suggested during the press conference that the letter had been written that day, and Kardashian doesn’t correct that. In the first episode, the attorney discovers O.J. penning both a will and his final words just hours before he goes on the run. In reality, the note was dated June 15th, 1994 — two days earlier, a fact that Kardashian also edited out. As Toobin points out in his book, if Kardashian admitted that his friend had written this some time before, he might have also let on that Simpson was considering breaking his agreement to surrender. “By leaving out the date, Kardashian avoided uncomfortable questions about his own role in O.J.’s disappearance.”
As far as a young Kim spelling her last name and the rest of the Kardashian children chanting it to the TV, one can only hope this is true. (3/5 Gloves)
Domino’s Pizza had its best day ever
The chase lasted roughly two hours — cops started pursuit at about 6pm and he reached his home around 8pm. In the meantime, Los Angeles came to a halt. Not only was the 405 shut down—”The backup on Sepulveda must be unbelievable,” one D.A. staffer notes on the show — but people were rapt, unable to take their eyes off the white car. There’s a brief scene in a chain pizza restaurant in which workers are scrambling to fill dozens of orders and are running out of cheese, a seemingly odd detail to include in a show about a high-profile murder. But in fact, the day of the chase was Domino’s best day to date. “We benefited from the fact that it was essentially ‘dinner time’ on the West Coast and late evening on the East Coast,” the franchise’s VP Tim McIntyre told Business Insider. “People were so enthralled by the bizarre nature of what was happening, they didn’t want to miss a moment.” Bad day for the Juice, great day for pizza. (5/5 Gloves)