AFTER 16 MONTHS OF THE O.J. SIMPson Show, one might think TV viewers had finally had enough. But the news last week that Simpson would do his first post-trial interview--for an hour on NBC Wednesday night--sparked more frenzied anticipation than anything since ...well, since the announcement of the verdict in his double-murder trial one week earlier. This time, however, the suspense culminated in a gigantic letdown. On Wednesday morning, less than eight hours before he was scheduled to be questioned by Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric, Simpson canceled.
Simpson ultimately picked another forum to have his say, phoning the New York Times to explain why he had backed out of the NBC interview. His attorneys convinced him, Simpson said, that his TV comments might hurt his chances of successfully fighting two wrongful-death civil suits that have been filed against him by the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. "My lawyers told me I was being set up," Simpson said. "They felt the interview was going to be tantamount to a grand-jury hearing." Simpson went on to tell the Times that he isn't broke ("I still have my Ferrari, I still have my Bentley"), that he would like to debate prosecutor Marcia Clark in a pay-per-view TV special ("I'd like to be able to knock that chip off Marcia's shoulder") and that he thinks most Americans believe he is innocent. "Maybe I'm a little cocky," he noted, "but in my heart I feel I can have a conversation with anyone."
If so, last week provided a dose of reality. Twelve jurors may have acquitted Simpson of first-degree-murder charges, but according to a TIME-CNN poll, 56% of Americans still think he's guilty. The planned NBC interview prompted thousands of angry phone calls to the network. Demonstrators from the National Organization for Women and other groups massed outside NBC's Burbank, California, studios in protest. Advertisers refused to buy commercial time on the program, thus enabling NBC to take the high road by announcing that the interview would run without ads. (Simpson insisted in the Times that it was he who wanted the interview to be commercial-free.)
The reaction crystallized the problem that Simpson, despite his acquittal, faces in trying to rehabilitate his image, resurrect his career, resume a normal life--or even tell his side of the story. Many pundits, operating on the assumption that for the rich and famous, every scandal is a career move, predicted that Simpson would, if cleared, be back on the celebrity circuit in no time. Yet Simpson has entered uncharted waters. Other stars, from Fatty Arbuckle to Michael Jackson, have been tainted by criminal charges or allegations, but none has weathered a murder trial whose every evidentiary twist and turn was witnessed by the entire nation. The same values-free commercialism that enabled Simpson to become a best-selling author while still in jail is now turning against him. The controversy surrounding him has made Simpson too much of a risk for those who depend on the goodwill of a mass audience.