As The People v. O.J. Simpson makes abundantly clear, the Kardashian family had a complicated involvement with the 1995 criminal trial a...
As The People v. O.J. Simpson makes abundantly clear, the Kardashian family had a complicated involvement with the 1995 criminal trial and the professional athlete at its center. Simpson was best friends with Kardashian patriarch Robert, the moral compass of Simpson’s defense team. He was “Uncle Juice” to Robert’s four children, who would one day become reality stars and be pulled back into Simpson-related headlines because of the FX dramatization of the tragic events. And he was the husband and accused murderer of Kris Jenner’s good friend Nicole Brown Simpson, who was a victim of the gruesome tragedy along with Ron Goldman. And in a new interview on Tuesday, Jenner shed more light on the complex dynamics between the two families, even revealing how the former athlete phoned her on multiple occasions during the months following her friend's murder.
While on Ellen, Jenner was asked whether Simpson tried to contact her after the murder of his ex-wife and Goldman.
“Right after,” Jenner said. “He called me a few times. He wanted to talk, and explain how he felt.”
“That must have been awkward,” DeGeneres interjected.
“It was painful,” Jenner said. “You know, it was just every single day it was something different and it was really difficult because my ex-husband [Robert Kardashian ] was on one side, I was kind of on the other and the kids were stuck in the middle. It was trying to explain this to children and then O.J. had called and everybody lost so much that night. It was you lost everything you knew and I can’t even imagine being her family, her sister, her parents — they were so devastated. All of us friends were completely you know. . .it was hard.”
On the show, Jenner said that she was not aware of the physical abuse element of the Simpsons’ marriage, although there may have been hints that she did not pick up on.
“I didn't know that there was abuse until we heard and saw the whole thing unfold [on the news] like everybody else and then heard the 911 tapes that were going to be used in evidence during the trial,” Jenner told the talk show host. “It was heartbreaking. . . me and some of her other close friends were all really surprised and shocked by that because we felt we really failed her as a friend. It was horrible.”
As Jenner has said in the past, she was supposed to meet Nicole Brown Simpson for lunch the day after she was murdered.
“She said she wanted to show me some things and talk about what was in her safe,” Jenner recounted. “And so now unfortunately it all makes sense that that's probably what she wanted to reveal to me that next day, which broke my heart because I will always feel horrible that I didn't pay enough attention."
In an interview this past January, Jenner said she is still haunted by the signs she missed.
“I beat myself up because I felt like I wasn't paying attention. Like, how did I miss this? But that's typical in an abusive relationship—that the woman doesn't speak out about how she's being treated. My heart breaks because of all the pain and suffering she went through. I wish I had noticed the signs. She was fighting for her life many days I'm sure. I try to pay attention to things more now. I follow my intuition.”
Interestingly, Jenner is not the only woman involved in the trial who calls it painful and blames herself for events around the tragedy. In an upcoming interview for Dateline NBC,Marcia Clark, the former prosecutor in the murder case, recalled how she felt when she heard the jury foreman read the two-word verdict: “not guilty.”
“It was physically painful,” Clark said. “And I thought of Ron [Goldman] and Nicole [Brown], and I thought, ‘This is wrong.’” She added, “But at the end of the day, we really. . .there was no way to reach that jury. There was no way to make them believe. There really wasn't.”
Interestingly, Clark also said that she did not want Simpson to try on the gloves that police said belonged to the killer.
“That was not my call,” Clark clarified. “I did not want him to try on the evidence gloves. I never did.”
The idea came from Christopher Darden, who apologized to Clark after the glove snafu played out theatrically in court and press, dealing a devastating blow to the prosecution.
Clark said that she forgave Darden, telling him, “It's O.K. If that lost the case for us, we were never going to win anyway.’”
(via vanityfair)
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