How to Watch ‘The People vs. O.J. Simpson’ Online
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The sensational 1995 trial that saw O.J. Simpson on the stand for murdering his ex-wife and her friend is now on many people’s minds again following news of the infamous figure’s death on Thursday morning.
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The former champion football running back-turned-actor, who was ultimately acquitted in the trial, died of cancer, his family confirmed. He was 76 and died Wednesday at his home in Las Vegas.
The 20 year-old events following the murder — from Simpson’s televised slow-motion Bronco chase to the LAPD investigators arriving on the scene — were replicated in painstaking detail in FX’s “The People vs. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story,” which released in 2016. The docuseries is the first season of Ryan Murphy’s anthology series “American Crime Story,” all three seasons of which are now available to stream on Hulu.
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On June 12, 1994, Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman were found murdered outside her Brentwood condo. Simpson, who had pleaded no contest to a domestic violence charge against Nicole Brown Simpson when they were married, was considered a person of interest in the killings and charges were filed against him. Instead of turning himself in, a media spectacle erupted when he attempted to flee in his white Ford Bronco and the police followed in a slow-speed chase. The televised chase on June 17 drew an audience of some 95 million people.
The ensuing trial became a media circus and Simpson was found not guilty for the two murders. But in 1997, Goldman’s family brought a civil suit against Simpson, and he was found liable for wrongful death and battery against Goldman and battery against Nicole Brown Simpson. He was ordered to pay $33.5 million in damages.
Much of the FX series focuses on the rival legal camps throughout the trial, including the squabbles within the so-called “Dream Team” that Simpson assembled to defend him, consisting of Robert Shapiro played by John Travolta, and Robert Kardashian, played by David Schwimmer. The prosecutors Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden are played by Sarah Paulson and Sterling K. Brown, respectively.
More than that, the 10-episode series captures the circus-like atmosphere that polluted the so-called “trial of the century,” from witnesses selling their stories, to more or less conducting the trial via Larry King’s talk show. In his review of the show, TV critic Brian Lowry wrote that it was “arresting from the get-go” with “performances [that are] almost uniformly superb.”
“Although ‘People v. O.J.’ commits a few minor fumbles,” he continued, “almost everyone here has acquitted themselves honorably, in roles that, for the most part, fit them like a glove.”
Stream “The People vs. O.J. Simpson” on Hulu.
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