For The Washington Post

Nick Adams

Esther Perel - Psychotherapist

FTWP

The Washington Post

style-power-chavezrodriguez

handout

Rich Fierro

SOCIAL SHARE style-ofinterest-expensivehair

Country Music Stars Lee Brice And Lewis Brice Perform On "Fox & Friends"

Contributor

A conceptual illustration depicts a woman on a poolside stretcher wearing a bikini. Roughly applied spray tan drips off her body.

style-ofinterest-tanning

Portrait of Lauren Bobert at The University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.

CVS Columbia Heights - Washington, DC

MFW: The Avavav fashion show during Milan Fashion Week.

Lily Gladstone

The woman standing in the pool appears differently to those outside, as her shape beneath the surface is unique.

Ozempic sidles up to the body positivity movement

Sandeep Salter Of Salter House

Illustration for style-power-taylor24

Ralph Nader

Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Stephen A. Smith would like even more of your attention

Wait, what is Stephen A. Smith talking about? Find out with our quiz.

Local sports networks go dark mid-game amid dispute with Comcast 

What’s the best bus to New York? We tested 5 for comfort and value.

Adaptive equipment is making national parks more inclusive

Southwest passengers now get a $75 voucher for big flight disruptions

Carolyn Hax: Will request for a postnup offend much younger wife?

Ask Sahaj: Responding to microaggressions is taking a toll on me. Can I stop?

Miss Manners: Offering my bedroom to guests

That time football legend, rig-driving eligible bachelor Biden was arrested

Trump and allies say Biden pays rent for ‘illegals’ in Michigan. Not true.

Eighty percent of Ukraine-Israel bill will be spent in U.S. or by U.S. military

The beginner’s illustrated guide to watching an F1 race

Police arrest pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia

Election 2024 latest news: Biden holding events in battleground state of North Carolina

Campuses are grappling with the Gaza war. So are our columnists.

Young Georgians want to be part of Europe. Their government is in the way.

Taxes are inevitable. Paying to prepare them doesn’t have to be.

A murder plot that cannot be ignored: India must come clean at last

Trevor Williams’s escape act helps Nationals blank Rangers 

How the Nationals helped Mitchell Parker develop into a big leaguer

The 33 best things to do in D.C. this weekend and next week

Cat climbed into Amazon return box, found alive 630 miles away

I learned to heal my sadness by cradling dying chickens 

Brave Little Hunter is free: Baby orca escapes lagoon for open seas

Middle East conflict live updates: Hamas says it views talks favorably; Blinken urges group to accept deal

Money goes elsewhere, aid workers flee, Haitians endure on their own

Why the Solomon Islands election matters to China and the U.S.

Russian state media ramping up English, Spanish presence on TikTok, study finds

Microsoft is changing how you log in to your accounts

Apple is behind in AI and killed its self-driving car project. What’s next?

US President Joe Biden Departure

As helicopters hovered over Brentwood to see how O.J. Simpson celebrated on the first weekend since his acquittal in October 1995, Norm Macdonald took his seat at “Saturday Night Live’s” Weekend Update desk and delivered his opening line with a half-smirk.

“Well, it is finally official,” he said. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CR8u-2TKb0" target=_blank>“Murder is legal in the state of California.”</a>

For Macdonald, the former football star accused of killing his ex-wife and a friend was more than a one-off joke. During his 1990s run as SNL’s fake anchorman, the comedian homed in on Simpson in his relentless pursuit of the perfect punchline — one that likely cost him his dream gig.

“He said he would stay in that job forever,” said Lori Jo Hoekstra, Macdonald’s longtime producing partner and closest friend until his death in 2021. But “as much as he would have loved to, he wasn’t willing to negotiate what he thought was funny.”

Even when the topic was as macabre and polarizing as that of a former American golden boy implicated in the grisliest of crimes.

Style is where The Washington Post covers happenings on the front lines of culture and what it all means, including the arts, media, social trends, politics and yes, fashion, all told with personality and deep reporting. For more Style stories, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/" target=_blank>click here</a>.

“Everybody was insane to do jokes about him,” said Tim Herlihy, head writer at SNL during some of Macdonald’s Weekend Update reign. “But Norm, I mean, he just couldn’t let it go. Especially as the trial started.”

Oct. 15, 1994: According to retailers, the most popular Halloween mask this year is O.J. Simpson. And the most popular Halloween greeting is, “I’ll kill you and that guy who’s bringing over your glasses, or treat.”

Macdonald’s role model was SNL’s first true star, Chevy Chase, who first occupied the fake-anchorman seat. But still, it was a surprise when Macdonald was tapped to take it over from Kevin Nealon in 1994. Jim Downey, the comedy writer who oversaw Weekend Update at the time, recalls that superagent Bernie Brillstein was pushing client Bill Maher for the role, while Warren Littlefield, then the president of NBC Entertainment, favored longtime writer Al Franken. Downey — an SNL legend who joined the show the same week as Bill Murray in 1976 — pushed for Macdonald and got his way.

“Norm was dry and deadpan. And more than anyone who’s ever done Update, he looked and sounded like an actual newsman,” Downey said. “And that’s the way the jokes were written … to sound more like news stories than jokes. We never got angry or screamed or, you know, ‘wake up, you people, the man is a murderer!’ We would just comment on what happened in court. ‘Was O.J. Simpson high on drugs the night of the murders? Absolutely not and a simple test of any of his blood found at the crime scene will prove it.’”

From the start, there were more than hints that a Simpson fixation could prove a problem for Downey’s small Update crew. Don Ohlmeyer, the NBC executive who oversaw SNL and its creator Lorne Michaels, was a longtime pal and golf buddy of the accused football star.

Downey remembered an SNL meeting when Ohlmeyer had to leave early. He needed to get to the Los Angeles County Jail during visiting hours to see his friend.

Jan. 14, 1995: O.J. Simpson’s lawyers say they don’t want the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman in the courtroom during the trial. They’re afraid the presence of the family members will just remind O.J. of how much more killing he still has to do.

As the Simpson jokes piled up, Ohlmeyer never spoke directly to Downey about it. But Downey knew Michaels was absorbing his boss’s furor.

“And I always felt kind of bad,” Downey said. “In order to protect us and also his independence at the show, he had to fight for something that he really didn’t personally believe in as much as other things. He certainly liked some of Update, but O.J. jokes were never his favorite thing because it was, after all, a murder.”

The Update writing crew was aware that Macdonald’s O.J. obsession was causing friction at executive levels. But Downey gave them license to keep writing the jokes.

“If there was any pressure, Jim would take it on,” remembered writer Frank Sebastiano. “If you thought something was really funny, he mostly didn’t care about the ramifications.”

Nor did Macdonald particularly care what the audience thought. He often seemed to relish when a joke got a tepid or bemused response in Studio 8H; Macdonald would pause, stare down the camera, soak up the awkward silence. He didn’t need clapping and cheering. In fact, he didn’t want it.

“I don’t like an audience applauding because to me that’s like a cheap kind of high,” Macdonald told the authors of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Live-New-York-Uncensored-Saturday/dp/0316781460" target=_blank>an oral history about SNL</a>. But that sensibility may have undermined him with the NBC higher-ups. Weekend Update “was never a big party” during his tenure, he acknowledged. “So I think the network started going, ‘It doesn’t seem like as much fun as it should be.’”

It all collapsed midway through the 1997-98 season. A fed-up Ohlmeyer decided to get Downey off Weekend Update, though he told Macdonald he could stay if he made peace with a new team. Macdonald declined to stick around without Downey.

So as it turned out, he had already told his last O.J. joke on SNL.

Dec. 13, 1997: After a Los Angeles restaurant refused to seat him, O.J. Simpson demanded, and got, $500 in compensation. In addition, the restaurant must now offer separate “Murderer” and “Non-Murderer” sections.

In the late ’90s, Macdonald and Hoekstra crossed paths with the acquitted star while golfing. They kept a distance, particularly for the sake of the third member of their party — none other than Kato Kaelin, the shaggy-haired prosecution witness who had stayed at Simpson’s guesthouse on the night of the murders and was launched to a peculiar fame by the trial.

In 2011, when Macdonald was hosting a sports show on Comedy Central, he tried to persuade Simpson to sit for an interview with him. There was one stipulation that perhaps could only have come from the mind of a comedian as darkly ironic as Macdonald: The lone subject off-limits would be … the murders.

For reasons still unclear, Hoekstra said, the interview never happened.

And then, in 2019, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kI4PuPopzR4" target=_blank>Macdonald made an appearance on David Spade’s short-lived Comedy Central talk show.</a> There, he listened as another former Weekend Update host, Dennis Miller, praised his fearlessness in mocking Simpson in the face of executive annoyance.

With a straight face, Macdonald delivered what may have been his final O.J. joke.

He said he had changed his mind about Simpson.

“He was found not guilty by a jury of his peers,” Macdonald said. He noted that Simpson was “the greatest rusher in the history of the NFL,” then paused.

“Maybe,” he added, “I was the greatest rusher to judgment.”

Was it a joke? If so, not everyone got it.

Shortly thereafter, Hoekstra told The Post this week, Macdonald got a text thanking him for his gentler commentary about the disgraced football star and inviting him to go golfing sometime.

Walk This Way: Run-DMC, Aerosmith, and the Song that Changed American Music Forever

Who Were the Beatles?

Tufts University, BA in English

Geoff Edgers, The Washington Post's national arts reporter, covers everything from fine arts to popular culture. He's the author of "Walk This Way: Run-DMC, Aerosmith, and the Song That Changed American Music Forever." 

Geoff Edgers

the-washington-post

Saturday Night Live - Season 22 (Restricted Content)

NBCUniversal

Arts & Entertainments

Power

The Media

Fashion

Of Interest

Style

washpost

prism://prism.query/site,/entertainment&limit=20

The latest news on entertainments and arts from The Washington Post. Breaking news and in-depth coverage of movies, music, tv, art, theater and video games.

prism://prism.query/ap-articles-by-site-id,/entertainment&limit=3

Style - The Washington Post

Style is the source for breaking news and trending topics on fashion, culture, and anything of interest. You’ll find in-depth coverage of the media and entertainment including the latest in movies, music and tv.