Academy Award®-winning actor Cuba Gooding Jr. will play football star turned murder defendant O.J. Simpson and Emmy® Award and Golden Globe® Award nominated actress Sarah Paulson will portray prosecutor Marcia Clark in the first installment of Ryan Murphy’s new anthology miniseries for FX, American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson.
Cuba Gooding Jr. won the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Jerry Maguire in 1996 and has earned critical acclaim for his work in feature films and television. His feature credits include As Good as It Gets, Men of Honor, American Gangster, Red Tails and Lee Daniels’ The Butler. Gooding Jr. is currently appearing in theaters in Selma and is in production on The Book of Negroes. His television credits range from Hill Street Blues and MacGyver to the recent TV movie Summoned and the upcoming Comedy Central series Big Time in Hollywood, FL.
Sarah Paulson is currently starring in American Horror Story: Freak Show as “Bette Tattler/Dot Tattler.” Paulson previously starred in the third installment of the critically acclaimed series American Horror Story: Coven for which she received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie. In the anthology series’ second season, Paulson earned a Critics Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Movie or Miniseries as well as an Emmy nomination for her work as “Lana Winters.” Paulson was also nominated for an Emmy Award as well as a Golden Globe Award for HBO’s 2012 television movie Game Change, and earned a Golden Globe Award nomination in 2006 for the NBC comedy series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. On film, Paulson was last seen in director Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, which was named Best Picture at the Academy Awards, and has starred in such critically acclaimed features as Mud and Martha Marcy May Marlene. She recently completed production on Todd Hayne’s latest film Carol opposite Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara.
Murphy developed American Crime Series to focus each season on a different true crime story which made headlines and captivated the imagination of the public. The first installment, American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, is based on the book The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson by Jeffrey Toobin.
Murphy joins Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson (The Hunger Games, Diary of a Wimpy Kid) and Brad Falchuk (Glee, American Horror Story, co-created with Murphy) as Executive Producers of American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, alongside Golden Globe-winning screenwriter Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. Dante Di Loreto also serves as an Executive Producer, with Murphy set to direct. The first two hours of the miniseries will be written by Alexander and Karaszewski (The People vs. Larry Flynt, Ed Wood, Man on the Moon). Production begins early next year in Los Angeles. It is produced by FXP and Fox 21 Television Studios, the companies that co-produce the long-running hit series Sons of Anarchy for the network.
American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson is a look at the O.J. Simpson trial told from the perspective of the lawyers that explores the chaotic behind-the-scenes dealings and maneuvering on both sides of the court, and how a combination of prosecution confidence, defense wiliness, and the LAPD’s history with the city’s African-American community gave a jury what it needed: reasonable doubt.
