'American Crime Story' Season 1 News: Cuba Gooding Jr. Did Not Meet With O.J. Simpson In Preparation For Role
Oscar-winning actor Cuba Gooding, Jr., who will play the role of O.J. Simpson in the forthcoming debut season of the true crime anthology series "American Crime Story," has revealed that he didn't meet the incarcerated former football star while he was researching and preparing for his role in FX's 10-part miniseries.
"I had no desire to visit him in his present condition, being incarcerated and being a shell of a man," Gooding said in a Yahoo! interview. The actor reportedly gained weight for the role and had to spend an entire month recuperating after the arduous six-month production for the series.
"I'm playing him at his most flamboyant, charismatic self," Gooding told ET at the winter press tour of the Television Critics Association. "If I played him today, then I'd [have] probably visited fifty times but no, this was at a time in his career where he was in a different state of mind," he explained.
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The former actor and American football player is a convicted felon currently serving a 33-year sentence for a 2007 armed robbery at the Lovelock Correctional Center in Nevada. Gooding would not give his opinion on whether or not Simpson killed his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in June 1994.
"I can't judge a character that I portray," the actor said, according to the ET report. "I have to be very neutral with the emotional core of that character."
The forthcoming series, which was based on the book "The Run of His Life: The People versus O.J. Simpson" by Jeffrey Toobin, has been getting a lot of positive word-of-mouth ahead of its premiere. Season 1, subtitled "The People v O.J. Simpson," also stars John Travolta (who also produces) as Robert Shapiro, David Schwimmer as Robert Kardashian, Sarah Paulson as Marcia Clark, Connie Britton as Faye Resnick, Courtney B. Vance as Johnnie Cochran, and Selma Blair as Kris Jenner.
"American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson" debuts on Tuesday, Feb. 2, at 10 p.m. on FX.
