Новый документальный фильм расследует скрытую эксплуатацию образа О.Дж. Симпсона в шоу-пранке «Juiced»

Ten years after O.J. Simpson was acquitted in the murder case that defined the ‘90s, his trial played out again on a smaller stage: the television set of a prank show called Juiced. “It’s been kind of this mythological project that’s been lurking in the ether that nobody really knew about,” documentary filmmaker Rebecca Halpern told Obsessed: The Podcast. “But everybody kind of had heard little bits and bobs.” In her new documentary, O.J. Unseen: Exploitation of Evil (premiering Sept. 7 and 8 on ID and HBO Max), Halpern investigates Simpson’s unofficial retrial-by-prank-show, delving into both Simpson’s and the film crew’s motivations for creating the never-aired series Juiced, starring Simpson himself. “The making of Juiced is such a uniquely layered time capsule,” Halpern told Obsessed: The Podcast. She said she considers Simpson to be a “dangerous individual, whether you think he killed them or not,” adding that “people just forget that altogether because they’re so wowed by his charisma, by his kindness, by his generosity of spirit.” “And the crew felt that way too,” she said. “Some of them went in thinking he did it. And then there were moments when they were like, ‘Well, maybe he didn’t.’” The trial of O.J. Simpson lasted eight months, with court proceedings airing on live television. Simpson was accused of stabbing his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman to death outside Brown’s home in June 1994. Despite significant forensic evidence, the jury acquitted Simpson of both murders—though, in 1997, a Santa Monica civil court unanimously found Simpson liable for the wrongful deaths of Brown and Goldman, ordering Simpson to pay $33.5 million in damages. Somewhere in the muddle of Simpson’s ensuing drinking and partying, Juiced creator Rick Mahr approached the disgraced ex-football star and asked him to “star in a hidden-camera prank show called Juiced—which is a riff on his nickname when he was playing football—where you shock innocent victims in pranks inspired by your own true crime case,” Halpern said. The show riffed on then-trendy hidden-camera prank shows such as Ashton Kutcher’s Punk’d, which ran on MTV for nine years starting in 2003. For Simpson, Juiced’s purpose was redemption. He “was perfectly happy to feed the beast in whatever way he could if it served his purposes,” Halpern said. The crew’s motivation, in turn, revealed something twisted about where entertainment was heading. “They knew full well that a confession, or any kind of conversation from O.J. Simpson about the murders, was going to be ratings gold,” Halpern said. “They knew it would get eyeballs. And who are we kidding? We’re in an attention economy, right? One of our interviewees said it best when she said that if they weren’t out to satirize murder, or if they weren’t out to get ratings or attention, they would have hired anybody else to star in this prank show. It would have been a schmuck off the street instead of O.J. Simpson. But they knew exactly what they were doing.” One of the most shocking pranks for Halpern was when Simpson tried to sell the infamous Ford Bronco he used to flee the murder scene to an unsuspecting woman. But some of Juiced’s “most telling” moments came from behind-the-scenes footage, Halpern said. Through all of these clips, plus interviews with Juiced crew members, Halpern pinpoints a narrative about entertainment’s ceaseless exploitation of violence for monetary gain—a trend that has overtaken our screens in the last few years. “That’s why Juiced is so interesting to watch: because we’re all complicit,” she said. “We’re complicit in content creation and the race for eyeballs. And we’re complicit in terms of what we’re willing to consume and how our feeds are populated with one Juiced after another.” Halpern said that the “true crime machine is really remarkable when it comes to these figures whose cases will forever be this unending question of ‘Did he do it or not?’” “And O.J. Simpson’s, for all the ingredients that went into that, felt like a soap opera,” she continued. “The whole thing has made for an enduring mystery that people cannot seem to get enough of.” O.J. Unseen: Exploitation of Evil will air on ID and stream on HBO Max starting Sept. 7. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch new episodes of ‘Obsessed: The Podcast’ every Wednesday and Friday. And follow our feed to listen to the show the next morning on your favorite podcast platform.