'American Crime Story' director spills secrets from behind the scenes
Director Anthony Hemmingway has worked with his share of top-tier talent. But even he concedes he’s never seen anything like the A-list group assembled for American Crime Story: The People Vs. O.J. Simpson.
“It was like we were in the playoffs, and we had a team -- literally a Dream Team, ready to win the championship,” he tells Mashable. The term is fitting; in the '90s, media used that same sports analogy to describe Simpson's starry lineup of defense attorneys.
Hemmingway is one of the three principal visionaries behind the camera on Crime Story; he directed five of its ten episodes.
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The process wasn't easy, but he wouldn't exactly call it "challenging," either.
“With anything that has any historical resonance, it's [about] trying to figure out what your 'in' is,” he says. “We were looking to figure out the best way to breathe humanity into these characters, into this world and this time.
"It wasn't a challenge," he continues."It was more trying to [do] it in a way where it can be relatable and relevant. Because although it was 20 years ago, it still feels like it was yesterday.”
That's partially because so many figures involved in the trial went on to achieve greater pop culture notoriety. “Every one of these people became a celebrity, and they wrote a book, so they had their own perspective -- a first person perspective,” says Hemmingway. “So all our actors were able to pull from that."
The director also found inspiration in the series' eerily accurate sets, meticulous recreations of locations associated with the Trial of the Century -- including the evocative Beverly Hills mansion standing in for Simpson’s estate and the condominium that approximated Nicole Brown’s home Bundy Drive. It was only a brisk walk away from the actual site where Brown and Ron Goldman’s bodies were discovered.
“We wanted it to be real,” says Hemmingway. “However, there was a huge level of sensitivity. It's tricky -- we don't want anyone to feel disrespected, because a lot of these people and their families still live today.
“So for instance, shooting outside of Nicole's condo -- we just shot a block away and recreated it, We definitely strived to find the closest thing to it. There was a lot of research that we used to the T.”
The most familiar set was Judge Lance Ito’s downtown L.A. courtroom, where the trial played out on national television. ACS's team recreated it in exacting '90s detail, down to the sickly greenish lighting and outdated wood paneling.
“Everyone was like, 'Wow!' They could not believe how real it was,” laughs the director. “Everyone who came by -- like, even my agent, an ex-attorney who's spent time in that courtroom. They felt that they were downtown, from the hallway detail, the pay phones, everything.”
The verisimilitude only increased when journalist and author Jeffrey Toobin -- who covered the trial for the New Yorker and wrote the book on which the series was based -- came to set.
"He visited frequently, and it was awesome just to sit and talk with him and get his perspective,” says Hemmingway.
Talking to Toobin also helped the director realize just how special American Crime Story is: a specific portrait of a specific time and place that nonetheless manages to feel completely contemporary.
Exhibit A: The day Hemmingway asked Toobin a few questions about the time Simpson's defense floated the idea that Brown and Goldman may have been the victims of a nasty form of post-mortem disfigurement known as a "Colombian necktie."
“He was in the courtroom that day, and he said he never knew what that was," Hemmingway recalls. "I'm reading in the script and I'm like, ‘What is a Columbian necktie?’ I had to look it up.
"So of course, I said [to Toobin], ‘What did you do? Did you go Google it?"
Hemmingway laughs. "You just forget the Internet was nowhere around back then!”
American Crime Story airs its penultimate episode Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET on FX.
Hillary Busis was Mashable's Deputy Entertainment Editor. Her coverage focused on the film and television industry. A graduate of Columbia, Hillary previously worked as a digital news editor at Entertainment Weekly, where she also cohosted a weekly show on EW's Sirius XM Radio channel. Her work has been featured in Vulture, Slate and the Wall Street Journal, among other publications, and she's also appeared as a guest on the 'Today' show and HuffPost Live.
