This week for my Top 10, I am counting down my Top 10 The People vs. O.J. Simpson Characters! I should mention that I am basing this off the characters in the series, not their real-life counterparts.
I always enjoy seeing Nathan Lane do dramatic work because he always blends it nicely with comedy and that was the case with his role in this series. F. Lee Bailey was one of the many larger-than-life lawyers involved in the case. Lane wasn't given as much of a chance to give the character depth which is why he only comes in at #10, but as a later addition to the proceedings, he still made a pretty strong impression.
9. MARK FUHRMAN
Before there was such a thing as Cancel Culture, Mark Fuhrman was cancelled in the court of public opinion and with good reason. But the series and actor Steven Pasquale did a great job of conveying how his own words and choices in other parts of his life limited what was a pretty damning testimony. He lost all credibility and Pasquale did a great job transitioning from a super confident character to an utterly broken one.
There was a lot of talk about John Travolta on this series. He was nominated for an Emmy for the role but he also received a lot of ridicule. The truth lies somewhere in the middle. Travolta did have some odd character choices and the look he had for the series was also bordering on cartoon-ish. But he also had some great moments and really made the character mostly believable because Robert Shapiro himself had some cartoon-ish elements. I think Travolta has been unfairly dragged at times for this role.
7. GIL GARCETTI
Probably the least flashy character on this list, I thought Bruce Greenwood was very effective as LA County's district attorney. He was portrayed as a generally good guy who was put in a really difficult position. There was probably more he could have done to help Marcia Clark but his mostly hands-off approach could get more criticism in hindsight. I'm not sure how sympathetic Gil Garcetti is but Bruce Greenwood's portrayal of him was fairly sympathetic.
The title character comes in at #6 on the list partly because I was very, very mixed on Cuba Gooding Jr.'s performance. He had the voice down but overall, O.J. Simpson is such a famous character, and Cuba didn't really have the mannerisms down well aside from the voice. He also wasn't given much to do as a character between the first and last episode. He might have been lower if not for the final scene of the series where the realization dawns on O.J. that he can't go back to the life he had before. That was a powerful moment.
5. ROBERT KARDASHIAN
One of David Schwimmer's more prominent post-Friends performances was on this show as Robert Kardashian. While I thought one of the few steps of this series was the silly way they tried to integrate the Kardashian girls, Schwimmer gave an interesting performance as Robert Kardashian. His character went from the biggest defender of O.J. to perhaps the one within the circle who was the most skeptical by the end. Schwimmer conveyed that well.
4. LANCE ITO
The judge of the trial was a caricature in the 1990s (most famously as the "Dancing Itos" on The Tonight Show). The People vs. O.J. Simpson and Kenneth Choi gave him much more character development. He seemed like a pushover who made a lot of bad decisions and some of that may be true. But we also saw the private anguish he must have been going through and Choi made him a much more sympathetic character than he was in the 1990s.
Before we knew him as Randall Pearson, we saw Sterling K. Brown as Christopher Darden and he was easily the character who was the easiest to root for. That was because he was portrayed as the most purely good character. He struggled with the racial politics while being on the other side, he struggled with where his place was in the prosecution with Marcia Clark in charge and he, like so many others, made some mistakes. Brown made him eminently likable.
2. JOHNNIE COCHRAN
Johnnie Cochran and Marcia Clark gained almost as much notoriety as O.J. Simpson in the 1990s so it's no surprise they were the most interesting characters on the series. When it all boils down, it was really a battle between the two of them. Courtney B. Vance captured everything that made Cochran larger than life. The most impressive thing about Vance's performance was he made someone who so often felt like a cartoon in real life not a cartoon at all. He gave him a lot of layers in an impressive performance.
Sarah Paulson as Marcia Clark is one of the great TV performances of the last decade. There are so many things that make the performance great but it can be best exemplified in a moment in the best episode of the series: "Marcia Marcia Marcia." As she proudly got a new haircut, she showed up at the courtroom only to be met with immediate derision. Paulson captured the deep insecurities that came with being a woman who was met with much more scorn than she deserved even as she clearly had her own missteps. It was nice to see Marcia Clark get a re-examination with this show.
Tomorrow: A One Season Wonder look at The Trouble With Larry!
Next Tuesday: Top 10 Superstore Characters!
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