Key players from the Trial of the Century speak out about The People v. O.J. Simpson

Kato Kaelin.
(Image credit: Pool/AFP/Getty Images)

The real-life players in the O.J. Simpson saga are watching The People v. O.J. Simpson with a critical eye, including Marcia Clark, Kim Goldman, and Kato Kaelin — who hates the "god awful" wig donned by his television counterpart.

The new FX miniseries about the Trial of the Century takes some liberties with the truth; as former prosecutor Clark told Entertainment Weekly, it's "not a documentary," but rather a dramatization, and "they weren't trying to 'get it right' necessarily." Kaelin finds that stance offensive, writing in the New York Daily News that the show "completely fabricated" some scenes, including one where he is with Simpson's family as Robert Kardashian announces O.J. killed himself. "I was never there," Kaelin said. "Did that actually happen? I don't know. I just know I wasn't there."

In addition to loathing the "ridiculous" wig worn by the actor portraying him, the man famous for being a house guest also takes issue with the amount of time he's in The People v. O.J. Simpson. "I have often said that the media made me out to be a bigger player in this drama than I ever was," he said, later adding: "There's too much Kato Kaelin in this series, even for Kato Kaelin's taste." Clark — who's played by Sarah Paulson — praised Paulson's acting, but said she doesn't know if she herself can handle reliving the trial: "All I can do is think about what went wrong and what was crazy about it. I go back into the nightmare."

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For Kim Goldman, the sister of murder victim Ron Goldman, the series is a painful reminder of the fact that her brother has been dead for more than 20 years. It has never been firmly established if Ron Goldman came across the murder scene at the home of Nicole Brown Simpson or if he was there when the killer showed up, and Kim Goldman wants people to remember "he didn't run." The series doesn't "show that," she told Today. "And that really sucks. My brother could have run and saved his own life — and he stayed to help his friend. I want people to remember my brother was a hero."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.