Sarah Paulson on ‘People v O.J.’: ‘If we did it right, the verdict would be different’

After the breadth of O.J. Simpson-related television content that 2016 has offered, between FX’s Emmy-nominated “American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson” and ESPN’s “O.J.: Made in America,” you might think that people would be tired of talking about a murder trial that took place over 20 years ago.

You would be wrong.

At the Television Critics Assn. press tour in Beverly Hills on Tuesday, several members of the cast and crew of “American Crime Story” took the stage for an hour-long panel, discussing the FX series and the saga of O.J. Simpson and the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

But even though the participants were willing to talk about the show, two of its biggest stars haven’t had the stomach to sit down and watch it.

Sarah Paulson, who received an Emmy nomination for her portrayal of prosecutor Marcia Clark, went so far as to leave the stage when clips from the season were aired for the audience.

When questioned about her departure, Paulson shared that she felt physically ill just seeing a snippet of the verdict scene.

“I thought I was going to cry and I was going to throw up,” she explained. “As goofy and goony and typically actress-y as it may sound, I felt very, very connected to her,” Paulson continued, going on to speak about how she couldn’t bear to watch Clark lose.

More than just making an emotional connection with Clark as a character, Paulson has forged a real-life connection with the former prosecutor.

“Oh, I’ve had coffee with her,” Paulson said. “I’ve had tequila with her.”

Costar Cuba Gooding Jr., who played Simpson, also has not watched the series, but not for any reason that he could explain.

He has seen the whole of “Made in America,” an experience he likened to watching “an infomercial” and that was valuable in reminding him just how much Simpson was loved.

There was no lack of admiration for the ESPN documentary from panelists.

“It was one of these weird things where I thought the shows really complemented each other in a strange way,” Larry Karaszewski, who co-created “American Crime Story” with Scott Alexander, said of the five-installment miniseries by Ezra Edelman.

Executive producer Brad Simpson expanded on Karaszewski’s thoughts by pointing out things that the documentary was able to expand on but what remained out of reach for “American Crime Story.”

“When you meet O.J. in our show, he’s already a murder suspect,” Simpson said. “But that doc really contextualized him in a way that we could never do in our TV show.”

Absent the breadth of Simpson’s life, “American Crime Story” instead went deep on what was deemed the “Trial of the Century” and all the associated players, forcing audiences and the actors to re-examine what they thought they knew about everyone involved.

“I did enter into it sort of thinking [Clark] was a particular kind of woman,” Paulson admitted. “I didn’t really think of her as a human being.”

In contrast, Gooding Jr. had long been on the record as entering into his role as neutral regarding Simpson’s guilt or innocence, a stance that put him in a unique position when it came to encountering fans of the show.

Since the show’s conclusion, Gooding Jr. has encountered fans who admitted to him that the series made them reconsider their original opinions about the not guilty verdict..

“That always hits me interesting, if for no other reason than they felt they could come up to me because they didn’t really know how I felt about [Simpson’s] guilt or his innocence,” Gooding Jr. said.

It’s that nebulousness that made the show so immediate for its actors, almost as though they were chasing the impossible, never so clear as when Paulson spoke of filming the closing arguments.

“I felt the biggest responsibility of all, some kind of fantastical idea that, if we did it right, the verdict would be different,” Paulson recalled.

Alas, there would be no alternate history for “American Crime Story,” nor, Brad Simpson assured the audience, would there be any O.J. epilogue forthcoming.

“What we had here was an Altmanesque approach where you have all these characters colliding,” Simpson said. “And I don’t think you could get that [with an epilogue], so I think the case is closed for us on O.J.”

Season 2 of “American Crime Story” is in the works and centering on Hurricane Katrina, a topic that aims to capture a different tenor than Season 1, thematically and tonally.

“It’s going to be about two things,” said Simpson of the upcoming season. “One is just the intensity, what it was like to be there on the ground, to be in that pressure cooker; but also, the bigger crime, which is that Katrina was something that was predictable that we weren’t prepared for, even though we knew it was going to happen.”

libby.hill@latimes.com

Twitter: @midwestspitfire

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