Banking on past onscreen gridiron experience, his lack of a murder conviction, and the fact that Jessica Lange would’ve just looked silly playing a former Heisman Trophy winner, Cuba Gooding Jr. has been cast as American Crime Story’s O.J. Simpson. As previously reported, the first season of American Horror Story’s true-crime companion show will focus on the 1994-95 trial that found Simpson charged with the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, a dramatization based on the 2013 book The Run Of His Life by Jeffrey Toobin. But in spite of all the other names already associated with the show, Entertainment Weekly reports that American Crime Story: The People V. O.J. Simpson will prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it is a Ryan Murphy television project by placing actress Sarah Paulson in the shoes of prosecutor Marcia Clark.
With Paulson in the Clark role and Emma Roberts already committed to doing what she does on American Horror Story (but funny on purpose this time) for Scream Queens, there are still plenty of high-profile members of the Murphy stable available to play The People v. Gooding’s O.J. Simpson. Based only on the most superficial resemblances, might The A.V. Club suggest Danny Huston for the role of defense attorney and unwitting begetter of a reality franchise Robert Kardashian? What about perpetual American Horror Story houseguest Evan Peters as one-time Simpson houseguest Kato Kaelin? And, of course, the aforementioned Jessica Lange remains available to play each and every Dancing Ito.