BONUS: OJ: Made in America Episode 1 (ESPN, PRIME, 2016)

Amye Archer (0:00)

Murder She Watched contains adult themes and adult language. Listener discretion is advised. Murder She Watched is for entertainment purposes only.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Murder She Watched. I'm Amye Archer, your host, and I'm here today with Brian and Becca, my two, we're going to be on an OJ journey together, so I don't really know what to call you, my two OJ friends that feels inappropriate.

Becca (0:36)

We're the real dream team. Yeah.

Brian (0:39)

I will be the OJ Sherpa for this adventuring party.

Amye Archer (0:43)

Brian, we're going to lean on you heavily for sports stuff. Becca, we're going to lean on you heavily for California stuff, and I'm just going to be sitting here listening, guys. That's going to work.

Brian (0:53)

We're going to do it, you guys.

Becca (0:54)

It'll be fun.

Amye Archer (0:56)

We're talking about OJ Made in America. I hope that you guys had a chance to listen to Brian and I talking about OJ Unseen, which was unnamed.

Brian (1:06)

A whole different world. It's a very different story than this.

Becca (1:10)

I asked Amye after watching it, did I take acid and not know?

Brian (1:16)

Probably.

Amye Archer (1:17)

Did I see OJ in white face? Did that happen? Was that a thing?

Becca (1:22)

Is he selling a Bronco?

Amye Archer (1:26)

Is he gurgling his beer like it's a cow's udder?

What is happening? Brother. The drinking. The drinking. We see Ken in this episode where he's drinking.

Becca (1:39)

Somebody gave him a mug of beer.

Brian (1:43)

He's got a problem.

Becca (1:45)

It's just those hands. It's hard for him to hold on to things.

Brian (1:49)

It's like under the giant holding a beer.

Amye Archer (1:51)

We did this a little bit when we did OJ Unseen. Brian, you shared with us your experience of OJ. Do you want to give us just a quick synopsis, and then Becca will talk about your experience with OJ.

Brian (2:04)

Yeah.

My background with OJ is very complicated. I come from a USC family. My mom's whole side of the family is USC people. My brother went to USC. I was supposed to go, but I didn't want to leave the Midwest, and my family never lets me forget that I did not go to USC.

Amye Archer (2:20)

It's down the whole family, right?

Brian (2:22)

Basically. I'm a midwesterner. I was born in Inglewood, so not far from where a lot of this is going on, but I've been in the Midwest since I was 10, and so I didn't want to move out there. But I come from a very USC-centric family. My mom, I talked to her yesterday about some of these things because she was born in LA in 52, so she was around for a lot of this. And so that part has always kind of influenced things than also being a black person in America watching this trial.

We were cheering for OJ. It's like, essentially, whether he did it or not, these racist cops are racist cops, so I can't root for the racist cops to do the right thing. There was that part of it. I grew up kind of idolizing Johnny Cochran. I wanted to be a lawyer until I got to college, and I'm like, I don't want to do this anymore. So yeah, I've got a very complicated history with OJ.

Football is my favorite sport as well, and so I love watching dominant running games, and so he was an idol of mine as a kid, too. There's a lot of pieces that play here with OJ.

Amye Archer (3:29)

Oh my god, I did not realize what a good running back he was.

Becca (3:33)

Wow. Yeah, I'm sorry.

Brian (3:35)

At the time, yeah, at the time, the best that ever lived. Like, and it wasn't close. It wasn't like, oh, is it him or is it somebody else? Like, we were watching the greatest who ever do it while he was doing it.

Amye Archer (3:46)

Agree. Becca, what is your experience?

Becca (3:50)

My experience is OJ Simpson is from San Francisco. I grew up, he was The Juice, where I learned to play volleyball, was a huge mural of him. We knew that he came from Portrero.

He was San Francisco's golden boy, and there was a lot of pride that he came home to retire. That's what we, maybe it was no one else wanted him, who knows? There's a lot of talk about that. But it was the romanced idea.

He was San Francisco's golden boy, who went out there and came home. His high school, the high school field used to be called Simpson Field up until-