Since its premiere last week, the remarkable miniseries about the 1994-95 O.J.
Simpson trial has been greeted with ecstatic reviews both among TV critics and from audiences on social media.
Complaints about Goodings physical likeness to Simpson are born out of our acute recognition of the latter.
Credit: FX
But looks arent everything.
MORE ONTHE PEOPLE VS. O.J.
Gooding is 3 inches shorter than Simpson, thats true.
was considered to be in the decades before the murders.
James Cameron has famously stated that he vetoed Simpsons casting inThe Terminatorbecause the football star seemed too harmless.
Everybody loved him, and ironically that was part of the problem,Cameron toldEWin 2014.
He was this likable, goofy, kind of innocent guy.
Of course, Cameron could just as well be talking about the actor playing Simpson.
Also, Goodings access to believable intensity, bordering on mania, is obvious in the first two episodes.
Which is exactly the question that the show wants to provoke.
Theres also an argument that O.J.
would have been better played by an unknown or little-known actor.
had a charm that could change the temperature of a room once he walked into it.
An unknown actor simply wouldnt bring that fundamental aura of fame to the role.
Its a strange but credible mental adjustment that we make so that experience history.
This is the area whereThe People v. O.J.
Simpson and especially Goodings performance takes a risk and pulls it off.
We are watching an effective facsimile of O.J.
as he was in 1994.
Gooding, 48, is about the age that Simpson was then.
