Read

Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski’s latest television crime anthology, American Crime Story (2016), launched the series with the ever-famous story of football legend O.J. Simpson’s murder trial in 1994-1995. In a shocking scene during the series’ first episode, a distraught O.J. Simpson (Cuba Gooding Jr.) drafts several suicide notes while hiding from the press in the home of his friend and law adviser, Robert Kardashian (David Schwimmer). Minutes later, he’s standing in an upstairs bedroom with a gun to his head.

“O.J., please, no, this is where my daughter sleeps,” Kardashian says. “Please do not kill yourself in Kimmy’s bedroom.”

Of course, history tells us O.J. didn’t pull the trigger. But the scene instantly became one of the most talked-about moments in the series premiere, both because of the clever way it alluded to Kim’s future mega-celebrity status and revealed a little-known piece of alleged history. It also raised questions: did Simpson really threaten suicide? And did he really do it in teenage Kim’s bedroom?

By the time of the trial, Robert Kardashian and Kris Jenner (Selma Blair) were divorced, sharing custody of their children, Kim, Khloe, Kourtney, and Rob. In 1996, Kardashian gave an interview to Barbara Walters on 20/20 (1978) from the bedroom, during which he discussed the suicide attempt and confrontation with O.J. During the chat, he reveals that he found O.J. in Kim’s room, sitting in a chair, looking at photographs with a towel on his lap. Inside the towel was a gun (not pressed to his head as seen on the show), and Robert prayed for O.J. as he tried to talk him down. The line delivered on the series by Schwimmer is not verbatim to what Kardashian told Simpson (and he doesn’t mention Kim by name), but is along the same lines: “I could never walk in this room, my daughter couldn’t sleep in this bed. She’d know what happened.”

Check the four-minute mark for Robert’s conversation with Walters:

Barely a teenager at the time, Kim spent considerable time at Robert’s home during this period of her life. The Barbara Walters interview clip provided the set designers with plenty of inspiration for recreating the scene in the series, and they were able to use Robert’s actual house and bedroom (currently unoccupied) where the original incident took place.

The showrunners of American Crime Story are intent on honestly representing the non-famous reality of the Kardashians’ 1990s existence, a far cry from their current public image. During the O.J. trial, “Robert seemed to be the only person in the carnival who wasn’t promoting his own self-interest,” showrunner Scott Alexander told Vanity Fair. “Robert was there simply because he’s a loyal friend, he really had nothing else to gain.”

Strange as it may be to consider, the first time a Kardashian reached the public eye was when Robert read O.J.’s suicide note on live television during a June, 1994 news broadcast.

Many today may forget that Robert Kardashian and his friendship with O.J. were the family’s first contact with the public eye. But all evidence suggests that the scene in American Crime Story is a notably accurate recreation of true events.