Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [193]
CHRIS MYERS:
I got a call from one of O.J.’s representatives saying “O.J. watches your show [Up Close] and thinks you’re very fair with people. He’d like to come on your show, but he’ll only do it if the show is live.” I said, “Oh, that’ll be no problem.” Barbara Walters had wanted to talk to him, but since he’d only do it live, she said no. So this was going to be the first live interview with O.J. after the criminal trial and the wrongful-death lawsuit.
We had a conference call with our producer, management, and one of his representatives ahead of time. I wanted to be clear that if we were going to do this, I had to be able to ask whatever I needed to ask. To my recollection, the only restriction was, “Can we leave his kids out of this?” And I said, “That’s fair.”
When some people heard we were going to have him on, I actually had death threats. People said, “How can you put this killer on the air? You’re going to glorify him.” I never told anyone this before, but I talked to Bob Shapiro, who defended O.J., and he told me, “I’d stay away from him. Anything connected with O.J. is bad news, is trouble, so I wouldn’t do the interview.” Bill Murray, whom I had met at the ESPYs and become friends with, recommended a book to help me out, with a title something like How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk. Vincent Bugliosi, the guy who put Manson away and a prosecuting attorney, was also very helpful.
When O.J. came to do the show, I believe we had police protection on the street because there were protesters. He is the only guest whose hand I never shook. In the first segment, we talked about his wife being murdered and how he was going to find the real killers, and then, as soon as we hit the break, his PR woman came out of the green room screaming, “You can’t ask these questions!” And O.J., to his credit, said, “No, I can handle it. Let him ask whatever he wants.”
Then, still during the break—this just tells you something about the guy—he turns to me and says, “Hey, I have a tee time at Riviera next Tuesday, if you want to play a little golf.” I was just stunned. This was a guy I felt eerie about, and I just kind of went, “Naah, no thanks, but we’ll pick the show up here again in about a minute.” When we came to the second break, which is where we were supposed to finish, the executives back at ESPN said, “There’s sports scheduled, but this is too good, let’s keep going,” so we went from what was going to be a half-hour show to fifty-plus minutes.
I asked him, “Are you capable of killing?” and “Did you do it?” I didn’t expect him to confess, but if you watched that interview, your mind would be made up about what happened there. After the interview, he was sarcastic and said, “Well, it was great talking sports with you,” since we never talked sports. I said, “What did you think we were going to do, talk about your Heisman Trophy?” And then I walked away.
I think it was a breakthrough moment. I heard people say, “We gathered around the TV set; we stopped everything at work.” You know, Wall Street, wherever, they watched closely. Jay Leno used something in his monologue about it; so did Tom Snyder, who was on after that. To me it was legitimate news from a major story, and yet it was on a sports network that was continuing to grow.
RICH EISEN, Anchor:
I was working in Redding, California, at KRCR-TV, the ABC affiliate there, and an agent named Henry Reich from William Morris called and told me he had heard that my tape was being watched by everybody,