Actor Cuba Gooding, Jr. who played Orenthal J. Simpson in the mini series stated that it took him a month to recover from the role and he likened it to how Heath Ledger claimed it was hard to recover from playing the Joker character. He also stated that as an actor, one should be able to recover quickly but after having to look at autopsy photos and then being asked by the director to act out a scene that depicted his son as being the killer of Nicole Brown Simpson was a difficult one. King also asked the actor whether or not he considered going to meet OJ in prison and he stated that it really didn’t matter because he was aware of how him being in jail might have changed him.
The Oscar-winning actor also revealed to Larry why he had a nervous breakdown while portraying O.J. Simpson. After filming the funeral scene where O.J. kisses his wife’s corpse, Cuba Gooding, Jr. admits that “I felt such extreme guilt because I remember celebrating the ‘not guilty’ verdict because I didn’t care if he did it or not. I didn’t want another black man to be railroaded, okay?” He adds, “So here I was in that moment realizing I never grieved for those families. I could celebrate that, but I can’t take into consideration the Goldman family, the Brown’s and it just hit me.Cuba Gooding, Jr. was stunned with what he saw when he first received Simpson’s famed suicide note while preparing for the role. He recalls doing research and asking, “Can I get the real suicide note?’ and they go, ‘That is real, sir,’ and I go, ‘No, no, no. This one has a happy face in it,’ and he goes, ‘He put a happy face in the O in OJ.’ And I was like are you kidding me? Yeah. Stuff like that blew me away.”
Cuba also admitted to Larry the roles he regretfully turned down, one of them would have been under the direction of the legendary Steven Spielberg. “I said no to Spielberg with Amistad,” he recalls.
I remember Heath Ledger said after he played the Joker character that it was just a darkness he couldn’t shake and I always thought that was kind of BS. I was like you’re an actor, you’re supposed to go in and out, but it’s true Larry. I’m telling you.
Check out the video above.
Follow us on twitter@hiphopenquirer
