NOW, O.J. THE PARIAH

By Richard Zoglin

AFTER 16 MONTHS OF THE O.J. SIMPson Show, one might think TV viewers had finally had enough. But the news last week that Simpson would do his first post-trial interview--for an hour on NBC Wednesday night--sparked more frenzied anticipation than anything since ...well, since the announcement of the verdict in his double-murder trial one week earlier. This time, however, the suspense culminated in a gigantic letdown. On Wednesday morning, less than eight hours before he was scheduled to be questioned by Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric, Simpson canceled.

Simpson ultimately picked another forum to have his say, phoning the New York Times to explain why he had backed out of the NBC interview. His attorneys convinced him, Simpson said, that his TV comments might hurt his chances of successfully fighting two wrongful-death civil suits that have been filed against him by the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. "My lawyers told me I was being set up," Simpson said. "They felt the interview was going to be tantamount to a grand-jury hearing." Simpson went on to tell the Times that he isn't broke ("I still have my Ferrari, I still have my Bentley"), that he would like to debate prosecutor Marcia Clark in a pay-per-view TV special ("I'd like to be able to knock that chip off Marcia's shoulder") and that he thinks most Americans believe he is innocent. "Maybe I'm a little cocky," he noted, "but in my heart I feel I can have a conversation with anyone."

If so, last week provided a dose of reality. Twelve jurors may have acquitted Simpson of first-degree-murder charges, but according to a TIME-CNN poll, 56% of Americans still think he's guilty. The planned NBC interview prompted thousands of angry phone calls to the network. Demonstrators from the National Organization for Women and other groups massed outside NBC's Burbank, California, studios in protest. Advertisers refused to buy commercial time on the program, thus enabling NBC to take the high road by announcing that the interview would run without ads. (Simpson insisted in the Times that it was he who wanted the interview to be commercial-free.)

The reaction crystallized the problem that Simpson, despite his acquittal, faces in trying to rehabilitate his image, resurrect his career, resume a normal life--or even tell his side of the story. Many pundits, operating on the assumption that for the rich and famous, every scandal is a career move, predicted that Simpson would, if cleared, be back on the celebrity circuit in no time. Yet Simpson has entered uncharted waters. Other stars, from Fatty Arbuckle to Michael Jackson, have been tainted by criminal charges or allegations, but none has weathered a murder trial whose every evidentiary twist and turn was witnessed by the entire nation. The same values-free commercialism that enabled Simpson to become a best-selling author while still in jail is now turning against him. The controversy surrounding him has made Simpson too much of a risk for those who depend on the goodwill of a mass audience.

Simpson's talent agency, International Creative Management, has dropped him as a client; publishers are reportedly balking at making a deal for his second book; and it is hard to imagine any network or film studio alienating a large chunk of its audience by putting Simpson in a TV series or movie. "In the eyes of many people he's still a murder suspect," says Joel Segal, an executive vice president at McCann-Erickson advertising. "Why should advertisers associate themselves with that kind of problem when they don't have to?" Offers a top movie agent: "I don't have a clue who would touch this guy in this business. We're not career-salvation artists; we're agents."

Simpson picked NBC, his old employer, as the venue for his first interview largely at the urging of entertainment president Don Ohlmeyer, a friend of Simpson's who had visited him regularly in jail. NBC News president Andrew Lack worked out ground rules for the interview with Simpson--no questions were to be off limits--and picked Couric and Brokaw to do the questioning. One passed-over aspirant for the plum assignment, Bryant Gumbel (Couric's Today co-anchor and another friend of Simpson's), took the rejection hard; he didn't show up at work the rest of the week.

Brokaw, Couric and Today executive producer Jeffrey Zucker planned strategy for the interview aboard a chartered plane to Los Angeles on Tuesday morning. They were helped by hundreds of proposed questions supplied by NBC staff members, reporters and legal analysts. (Members of the prosecution team declined to give any help.) The journalists were keenly aware that the interview would be placed under almost impossible scrutiny. "It was going to be really hard to strike the right balance," says Couric. "To be challenging and do follow-ups, but not be too prosecutorial." One strategic decision made early on: the interviewee would be referred to on the air as Mr. Simpson, not O.J.

In the end, Brokaw and Couric didn't get to refer to him as anything. Though Simpson, according to insiders, desperately wanted to do the interview, virtually his entire legal team advised against it: his comments, they pointed out, could come back to haunt him if they contradicted statements he had made earlier in the criminal investigation. In a statement read by attorney Johnnie Cochran, Simpson complained that NBC was turning the interview into a "confrontation" and looking for "an opportunity to retry the case."

Simpson's impromptu talk with the Times also raised journalistic questions. Using the element of surprise--he phoned Times TV reporter Bill Carter without warning--and refusing to answer any questions about the murder, Simpson effectively set the agenda and got the unchallenged forum he wanted. Still, the Times could hardly be faulted for printing the results of Simpson's first extended interview, however limited.

Though Simpson, by all accounts, is eager to have his say in public--every reporter is advised to stay close to the phone--associates say he will probably lie low for the near future. "He'll wait for this to all die down and for the civil lawsuits to get concluded," says his business attorney Leroy ("Skip") Taft. "In terms of public appearances, he's probably going to be pretty quiet for the next six months." The mood around Simpson has darkened since the euphoria following his acquittal. "You could make the case that his civil rights are being violated," says a friend. "People are calling businesses he has worked with and urging them to boycott him. He feels he is the most misunderstood man on earth." Though Taft claims "a lot of business deals" have been offered to Simpson, ranging from trading cards to 900 phone lines, nearly all the career avenues once open to him seem to be closing. "All the times I visited him in jail and during the criminal trial," says Taft, "he knew that the 'Juice' of the past 25 years isn't going to be started up again. He knows that." And if he didn't, he does now.

--Reported by Jeffrey Ressner and James Willwerth/Los Angeles and David E. Thigpen/New York

With reporting by JEFFREY RESSNER AND JAMES WILLWERTH/LOS ANGELES AND DAVID E. THIGPEN/NEW YORK