Cuba Gooding, Jr. is poised to tackle his most controversial role yet: assuming the role of O.J. Simpson during the period of one of America’s most sensationalized murder trials.
Via Entertainment Weekly
Producer Ryan Murphy has cast two major roles in his 10-episode FX miniseries take on the O.J. Simpson trial. Cuba Gooding Jr. (Jerry Maguire, The Butler) has been cast as football star turned murder defendant Simpson and Sarah Paulson (American Horror Story) has landed the role of prosecutor Marcia Clark.
The project will mark the debut season of Murphy’s American Crime Story, the Glee and American Horror Story co-creator’s upcoming anthology series that dramatizes major headline-making true crime stories. In a way, it’s like a nonfiction version of HBO’s True Detective — which is often described as a crime drama version of Murphy’s own anthology format trail-blazing AHS.
The full title of the first season is American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, and chronicles Simpson’s 1995 two-count murder trial that captivated the nation. ACS is based on the book The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson by Jeffrey Toobin. Murphy will executive produce the series along with Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson (The Hunger Games) and Brad Falchuk (Glee) and screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (The People vs. Larry Flynt). Murphy will also direct at least the first episode.
A couple of pictures of Paulson attending theopening night of Broadway’s The Last Ship at the Neil Simon Theatre can be found on the following pages.
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Photo: Joseph Marzullo, Nikki Nelson, Pat Denton/WENN.com
