Did James Cameron want OJ Simpson to play the Terminator?
The 1980s was a decade rife with cinematic creativity. The era of slasher horror and major blockbuster franchises meant you could barely move for merchandise in the form of bumper stickers, lunchboxes, and pyjamas. While filmmakers like James Cameron thrived making massive, violent blockbusters, others considered the era utterly vapid and devoid of any real meaning, cinematically speaking.
Take the great Quentin Tarantino, for example, someone you may think loved the bombastic chaos of ‘80s filmmaking, with the Pulp Fiction director decrying the lack of proper identity during the era. “Everything was cynical, then all of a sudden in the ‘80s all that was washed away,” he once stated, “And the most important thing about a character was that they were likeable…Every character had to be likeable and the audience had to like everybody”.
Well, if there was one ‘80s character that was a little more divisive, it was the titular Terminator of James Cameron’s 1984 movie of the same name. So immense that it remains embedded in popular culture to this day, The Terminator spawned several sequels and other related material, with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s central performance as a time-travelling cyborg being so iconic that it is almost impossible to see anybody else in the role.
Yet, surprisingly, Cameron admitted, “The idea of a hitman from the future trying to change past events was certainly not new…what I thought was cutting-edge was deciding to not have the Terminator be a guy in a robot suit. That’s how it was typically done. But a flesh-covered endoskeleton? That was new”. What resulted is one of the most iconic characters of the 1980s, a robot from the future sent back in time who was so utterly devoid of emotion yet so strangely full of charisma.
Thanks to the movie’s success, making $78million from a budget of just $6.4m, over the years, there have been a lot of myths and rumours about the production process of the film. One of the most popular ones involves the late American footballer OJ Simpson, who infamously was accused of murdering his wife and her friend during a very public trial in 1995. Apart from his sports career, Simpson also worked as an actor in films like The Klansman, The Cassandra Crossing and The Naked Gun, among other productions from that period.
According to Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Cameron initially considered Simpson for the title character, while Schwarzenegger was handed the part of Kyle Reese. The actor claimed that he was gifted a painting of the T-800, but upon scraping the surface, the face of OJ Simpson was visible underneath. When he was confronted with these reports, Cameron maintained that Schwarzenegger must have been hallucinating.
Though Schwarzenegger was adamant about what he saw, Cameron stated: “Let me correct that right now. Arnold is literally just wrong. I know it’s hard to imagine! You don’t argue with Arnold…Arnold was never offered Reese. OJ Simpson was never in the mix at all. That was rejected out of hand before it ever got any traction…[Producer and co-screenwriter] Gale Hurd and I looked at each other like that was the stupidest thing we’d ever heard in our lives. And I told him on that phone call, ‘It’s not OJ Simpson. We’re not doing that.’ And he said, ‘Well, will you meet with Arnold Schwarzenegger?'”.
As for the infamous painting, the director clarified: “I didn’t make the painting for him. I made the painting for us, for the production, of him as the Terminator. There’s no OJ under that painting. I gifted him that painting after the film, and I’m going to go over to his office and get it back now (laughs). I’m gonna go over there and go, ‘Arnold! I’m taking this painting back because you don’t appreciate it!'”.
No matter what Cameron says, Schwarzenegger is still convinced that OJ Simpson was selected to play the iconic role and has said so in multiple interviews. The rumours gained such momentum that other reports claimed OJ Simpson was only rejected by Cameron because the filmmaker thought that Simpson was “too pleasant” to convince the audience that he was the Terminator.
Whatever the truth behind the production may be, it’s a relief that Schwarzenegger eventually got the part, delivering an oddly captivating performance that Simpson could have never matched.
