Veteran journalist Chris Myers recalled on Tuesday the wild story of him interviewing former NFL star O.J. Simpson three years after his acquittal on murder charges in 1995.
Myers shared his experience during a recent appearance on OutKick’s "The Ricky Cobb Show." Myers said Simpson, who died earlier this year, had two conditions for the 1998 interview: The first was it had to be live.
Simpson turned down Barbara Walters because she wanted to have a taped interview, and he didn’t want it to be edited to make him look bad.
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The second condition was that Myers could not ask about his children.
Myers said the former NFL running back was actually going to appear on his ESPN show "Up Close" before the murder trial was announced.
After the interview was agreed upon, there were people in Simpson's circle who did not think Myers should interview him.
"One of O.J.’s main attorneys in the trial that got him off told me kind of on the side, ‘Hey, I wouldn’t do the interview.’ I said, ‘Why is that?’ He said everyone attached to him is negative."
Other people had different reasons for why Myers should not conduct the interview.
"Some people didn’t want me to do the interview and criticized me because they thought, ‘Hey, you’re putting a killer on the air." And he is going to try and repair his image. But we left it up to the audience."
The other risk to the interview was Myers was told ahead that Simpson could spin his "narcissistic lies" and make people look "stupid" in a live setting.
While not being a sportscaster at the time, or a lawyer or a judge, Myers said he dove deep into the information to prepare.
"I saw things that maybe the jury didn’t even get to see, police documentation photos, things like that."
During the interview, Myers was asking Simpson about the domestic violence charges and showing photos of his ex-wife.
"We went to a commercial break, and his media rep comes running out of the green room and yelling to me, ‘You can’t ask these questions!’ and O.J. was like, ‘Nah, nah, go in there. I got this, this is fine.' And then he turns to me in a casual moment and says, ‘Hey, I got a tee time out at Riviera golf country club next week, and we have an opening in our foursome if you want to join us.’
"I was shocked, because we were between this interview live off the air, coming back in 60 seconds, and [it] just kind of showed me his disengagement, whatever you wanted to call it."
Simpson was acquitted on the murder charges of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. But he was later held liable for her murder in a civil trial and ordered to pay their families $33.5 million.
He was arrested in 2007 for robbing a Las Vegas hotel room and found guilty in 2008.
Simpson was released on parole in 2017 and was diagnosed with cancer in 2023. He died on April 10, 2024, at 76.
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