OJ Simpson shown smiling in new prison photo

Simpson became the first African-American spokesman to appear in advertising campaigns for mass audiences, which until then had featured nearly exclusively white actors.

The first episode of O.J.: Made in America premieres at 9 p.m. EST on ABC. “The last thing they ever wanted to do was set up O.J. Simpson and the last thing they ever expected to do was find evidence of his guilt”, she argued.

Turns out there’s at least 7 1/2 hours more as crafted by filmmaker Ezra Edelman in his breathtaking documentary, “O.J.: Made in America”.

Ron Shipp, a former police officer and friend of Simpson, who testified on his behalf during the 1995 murder trial says, “He is 300 pounds and he looks terrible”. Simpson, who spent his whole life trying to be colorless, if not white, was suddenly presented as a civil-rights hero. He made a gangsta-rap video and authorized a semi-tell-all book called If I Did It. O.J.’s childhood friend Joe Bell – one of the most ubiquitous and compelling talking heads in Made in America – recalls a story of going by the apartment where Mr. Simpson lived, and seeing him there with another man. O.J. laughed about it, strangely, but then was very reticent to talk about it. “No one knows the facts that you know and I think you can really trust Ezra to do a professional job'”. It’s illuminating, gripping and, at times, downright astonishing.

“I was initially reluctant to take it on because. what more could be added?”

But he dismisses the facile suggestion that such a pedigree qualifies him to tackle racial issues from a neutral vantage point.

“Being a cop, I said to myself, ‘Man, he killed her, ‘” he said. “He told me he cut his finger in Chicago on a glass”.

“All O.J. had to do to get recognized is to run a football”.

Edelman’s film also draws out one of the thorniest schisms at the heart of this trial, and of the public’s responses to it. So is the circus-atmosphere trial, which ended October 3, 1995, with O.J. and his “Dream Team” of defense lawyers winning a hard-fought acquittal. The film goes on to chronicle not just the abuse she suffered at the hands of O.J., but also her life as an ambitious worker, party reveler, mother, and wife.

“I was pulled by emotion, but I’m an intellectually driven person”, he sums up.

The once-beloved football player became infamous for beating murder charges in the 1994 deaths. You can sort of delve deeper into characters’ relationships, (something) I would be interested in doing, but can’t do.

It goes back to the lovely tale we like to tell about Branch Rickey [who, as Brooklyn Dodgers president and gm, broke baseball’s color barrier and signed] Jackie Robinson. The film is part of ESPN’s 30 for 30 series, which for the past seven years has produced some of the best sports documentaries around but has never previously come close to producing a work of this magnitude and power.

“I have to acknowledge that maybe it’s a good thing”, he says.

Beginning Saturday, CTV and TSN will debut the much anticipated and timely docu-series O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA.

In 2008, he was sent to prison for 33 years for a separate case of kidnap and armed robbery.

Through it all, Edelman’s film is a virtuoso piece of work, and one that proves to be an invaluable and often empathetic portrait of a community in turmoil, where the question of whether anyone involved actually got justice is one that was actively shirked-off by people involved from all-sides.

By any measure, he’s a fallen man whose life took a weird turn at age 46. One of the jurors interviewed here says explicitly that Simpson’s verdict was “payback for Rodney King”. You want to know when a movie is well done?

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“He’d probably been working out his hand, developing muscles in his hand, and we knew that the glove would shrink, right?”