I’m standing on the sidelines watching OJ Simpson. He’s posing as a salesman on a used car lot in Las Vegas, trying to steer unsuspecting prank victims to buy a white Ford Bronco.
‘It’s got great escape-ability,’ OJ ad libs with a congenial smirk, adding, ‘It was good for me.’
I watch with a mix of horror and bemusement as the gag plays out like all the other moronic gags in this hidden camera prank show where I’ve been hired to play OJ’s funny little sidekick; a forced interaction that digresses into mundane small talk and is decidedly unfunny.
Here in 2006, just a decade after the murder trial of the century, OJ has signed up to star in a comedy comeback project to regain the accolades once bestowed upon him.
But it didn’t go as planned. Although briefly available on demand, the series, save for a few YouTube clips, never really saw the light of day after the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman learned of it.
On September 8, a new limited series documenting this attempted return debuted on Hulu.
Comedian and journalist Harmon Lee had a brief stint as OJ Simpson’s sidekick in the ill-fated 2006 series Juiced
On set, Simpson joked about his infamous white Bronco, saying it had good ‘escape-ability’
The Bronco showed up in one Juiced episode where Simpson pretended to be a car salesman
Rebecca Halpern, the director of OJ Unseen: Exploitation of Evil, approached me to take part in it. I was highly skeptical.
‘Is this the same vanity PR project concocted by the Juiced team?’ I asked Halpern.
My skepticism stemmed from what happened back in 2023, when I received dozens of frantic messages from Todd Lewis, the director of Juiced. He and Rick Mahr, the producer, were putting together a sizzle reel for an idea they wanted to pitch to Netflix. And they wanted me involved.
Their idea was presented to me as a redemption story – a way to ‘clear the names’ of Juiced creators.
‘I was young, dumb and ashamed of it,’ Lewis wrote. He shared how he’d been offered the opportunity to tell the story on big talk shows in the past, but: ‘I never did it because I could not control the narrative. But now I can.’
Yet from where I stood, it looked like a PR vanity project designed to rehabilitate the creators whose reputations were tarnished by their association with this crass foray into reality TV. I declined to participate.
Halpern told me that the producer of Juiced said a story I wrote detailing this bottom-feeding low point in pop culture history was the reason Juiced was shelved, which seems like convenient revisionist history.
Halpern confirmed that OJ Unseen was by no means a Juiced vanity project.
Okay, I was in.
How I Became OJ’s Sidekick
Even before I got into my car to drive to LA for the production of this ill-conceived prank show, I was already planning to cover it for Vice.
I was a journalist and comedian living in San Francisco, with one book already under my belt; The Harmon Chronicles followed my exploits going undercover and infiltrating extremists and subcultures – ranging from the Church of Scientology to white supremacist hate groups.
Even before Harmon started work on the production of the ill-conceived prank show, he was planning to cover it for a magazine
Strippers were some of the only women on set, according to Harmon
For me, the more horrible the place, the better the story. And OJ Simpson in Juiced sounded utterly heinous.
It wouldn’t be my first time infiltrating an idiotic reality TV show either. I’d posed as several unhinged characters, including a competitive butter-eating champion on a reality dating show, a part-time bounty hunter on the TV game show Whammy, and a convicted felon who is hooked up to a lie detector on a reality show called, well, Lie Detector.
An ad on Craigslist about OJ’s TV show prompted me to send the director my reality TV reel, and I got the job.
I was honestly shocked anyone in their right mind would think this was a good idea.
Juiced, a Punk’d knockoff as far as I could tell, was to center on OJ pulling pranks and then revealing himself with the catchphrase: ‘You’ve been Juiced.’
The debacle was being produced by the same crew who brought the world Bum Fights, Backyard Wrestling, and would later produce World’s Wildest Bachelor Parties.
For two weeks, I’d be inside the Juiced inner circle, documenting every unhinged moment.
On set, OJ jested about the infamous white Bronco in which, charged with the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman, he led LAPD on a televised slow speed car chase after missing a deadline to turn himself in: ‘It got me out of harm’s way!’
On that Vegas car lot, I tried to digest why OJ would make light of the vehicle that literally symbolized his ex-wife’s brutal murder.
But without the murders, there is no Juiced. His notoriety was the entire selling point of the disturbing series.
Yet the first thing the director of Juiced said to me was ‘You know Harmon, we really can’t mention the murders.’
‘Okay,’ I said, nodding my head, and repeating, ‘No mention of murders.’
Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson was murdered in 1994
Simpson was acquitted of the double murders in 1995, and the comeback show stipulated that the murders could not be mentioned
The Gags of Juiced
The gags of Juiced were all built on one simple premise; something would happen…and then OJ Simpson would pop out and hilarity would ensue.
I interview a woman to be my roommate. In comes my other roommate… it’s OJ Simpson.
I play a disgruntled homeowner conducting an open house for prospective buyers. In comes another prospective buyer, it’s OJ Simpson.
A guy confronts his girlfriend who he thinks is cheating on him. Inside her motel room, it’s OJ Simpson.
Unfortunately for the comedy world, OJ was not gifted with the Second City art of improv. OJ would pop out, shake everyone’s hand, and then revert to small talk, playing up his congenial public persona as if to say: ‘Hey look what a nice guy I am, surely I’m not responsible for those gruesome murders.’
After that OJ would exclaim, ‘You’ve been Juiced!’
But the most telling moments of Juiced weren’t in the gags, but in the spaces in between. During one prank, for kicks, I kept calling him Danny Glover.
‘What’s Mr Danny Glover doing here?’
‘I ALREADY TOLD YOU I’M NOT DANNY GLOVER!’ he roared.
For a moment, the prank wasn’t on the unsuspecting victim. It was on OJ. And OJ, the fallen star, apparently didn’t like being the punchline.
Later, when we were in a motel room, OJ was being made up to look like an old white man (though he just ended up looking like a severe burn victim). While the makeup was being applied, OJ kept repeating: ‘The lights are on me. I’m feeling like a star,’ and then proceeded to tell jokes that never landed.
‘Who’s the first Jewish guy to get a Heisman Trophy?’ OJ said to the room full of cast and crew. ‘Fred Goldman, because he’s got mine!’ he replied, referring to Ron’s grief-struck father, cracking himself up, while the rest of us stared at our shoes and contemplated our career choices.
In one ill-fated prank, I had to run onto the fairway of a golf course and steal everyone’s golf balls (this was an OJ idea). I depended on the man for my safety as an irate golfer chased me around with his golf club raised, ready to swing at my head.
But OJ was so caught up in his golf game he forgot his line: ‘You’ve been Juiced.’
Wearing old white man makeup for a Juiced prank, Simpson kept repeating: ‘The lights are on me. I’m feeling like a star’
Juiced showed Simpson pulling pranks and then revealing himself with the catchphrase: ‘You’ve been Juiced’
After the prank, OJ laughed and said: ‘That guy was angry. He was like OJ on alcohol.’
I had the misfortune of meeting that version of OJ. The shoot ended in Las Vegas, the locale where he would eventually be arrested for armed robbery.
This is when things turned dark. A shady entourage surrounded OJ, and there was barely a moment when he was sober.
Inside the lobby of a seedy motel off the Vegas Strip, OJ was propped up in a corner wearing an Elvis Presley jumpsuit; ready to play a wacky motel clerk.
The problem was that the dude was completely hammered. Producers decided, if we can’t get OJ pulling pranks, at least we can film OJ while pranks happen near him.
‘Hey!’ an intoxicated OJ whispered to a couple before I could Juice them.
‘Hey! I’m OJ!’ he slurred from behind the Elvis glasses. ‘Hey! Do you recognize me?’
A telling moment that spotlighted OJ’s desire to be remembered and adored.
But still, the most mind-numbing part of this whole scenario is that good, seemingly normal Americans went nuts when they found out they’d been Juiced by OJ.
‘Oh, my God! This is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me!’ screamed a kid in a basketball tank top, who high-fived his friend and suddenly started freestylin’ to impress OJ. ‘I just rapped for OJ! That’s as big as it gets!’
It was as if OJ had become the Santa Claus of murder.
The Aftermath
When Juiced wrapped, I returned to San Francisco and did what I came to do; write about the entire debacle in all its rotted glory.
I didn’t go to LA to be OJ’s comedic hype man, play nice, and help bring him back to his former glory; I went to document exactly what I witnessed from inside this diseased trainwreck.
Posing as a salesman on a used car lot in Las Vegas on the set of Juiced, Simpson tried to convince unsuspecting prank victims to buy a white Ford Bronco
Juiced wrapped in La Vegas, where Simpson would eventually be arrested for armed robbery
Did the producers of Juiced ever want to sue me? Of course. But I weighed my allegiance: Was it going to be with Team OJ Simpson or Team Rest of the Sane World?
Not long after my story ran in Stuff Magazine (and later Vice), I was a guest on The Howard Stern show. Afterwards, the producer of Juiced left an irate voice message saying: ‘I’m not angry you were on The Howard Stern show, I’m angry because you were bad mouthing the product. You said the product wasn’t funny!’
What a way to describe something as grotesque as Juiced, a show that attempted to turn a double-alleged murderer into a zany prankster.
After the Stern appearance, the director expressed cooking up a scheme to get me and OJ onto Jimmy Kimmel Live! oblivious to the fact that no mainstream show was going anywhere near Juiced. (My friend was Kimmel’s booker at the time, who confirmed to me that, indeed, there wasn’t a chance in hell.)
Harmon saw Juiced as a clear display of Simpson’s desire to be remembered and adored
Simpson served a nine-year sentence for armed robbery – he never served time for the 1995 murders of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson
But OJ was relentless and increasingly out of touch. His plans to write a book called If I Did It: Confessions of a Killer, where he’d hypothetically describe how he would have killed Simpson and Goldman received swift backlash. It was so severe News Corp cancelled the book and promptly fired publisher Judith Regan. Fox put the brakes on a planned TV special too.
Retrospect
In 2006, I thought Juiced was a bunch of idiots trying to outdo other idiots in what was known as the Ruckus video genre – to make the most extreme hidden camera prank show ever.
But looking back, I now see the toxic bro culture of it all. The crew, comprised almost entirely of guys, fueled by high-fives, built a project around a man who had repeatedly battered his ex-wife. Her murder was so brutal, so horrific that it left her nearly decapitated.
Juiced supposedly existed to rehabilitate OJ’s image – but the only reason anyone wanted to watch OJ Simpson pull hidden-camera pranks was because he was the OJ Simpson, acquitted murderer. His notoriety wasn’t an unfortunate obstacle to the show. It was the product.
I suppose somebody did get Juiced. It just happened to be the people making the show.
