After seven weeks of provocative cringe-humour, weird prosthetics, hit-and-miss attempts at comedy, and antics designed solely to embarrass America’s right-wing nutjobs and politicians, Sacha Baron Cohen’s satirical show Who Is America? came to an end last night with a doozy of a finish: an interview with OJ Simpson.
If you thought Baron Cohen couldn’t do anything more cringy or unsettlingly awkward, then ho boy was the OJ Simpson chat something else. Michael Scott and Larry David hooking up would still somehow result in something less awkward.
Donning his Italian socialite character Gio Monaldo, Baron Cohen wasted no time in making things weird by making super unsubtle references to the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman to his “girlfriend” while Simpson is sitting right next to him.
This wasn’t any wink-wink nudge-nudge stuff. It was more “it’s that bloke who did all the killing” stuff. However, Baron Cohen did manage to sneak in a reference to Simpson’s acting role in the Naked Gun series so I gotta give him props for that.
They really did save the best for last on @SHOwhoisAmerica The craziest OJ Simpson interview you’ll ever see pic.twitter.com/XsJhhcprTh
— ThatsGoodSports (@BrandonPerna) August 27, 2018
Once his “girlfriend” leaves the room, Baron Cohen immediately starts talking about how he sometimes wants to “kill her”. Gotta give points to the guy, he doesn’t like messing around, especially in front of a previously convicted criminal.
Unsurprisingly, Simpson is seemingly unfazed at all the allusions to murder since he is, you know, well-acquainted with it (allegedly), and he was a good enough sport to high-five Baron Cohen when he talks about dropping his “girlfriend” over the Grand Canyon. Ooof, I would’ve left him hanging there, bro.
Watch O.J. Simpson high-five @SachaBaronCohen after he makes a joke about murdering his girlfriend on the #WhoIsAmerica finale https://t.co/DfnzmTBKq4 pic.twitter.com/cEoZM2k5C5
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) August 27, 2018
Seemingly getting nowhere, Baron Cohen drops any kind of warming up and downright starts not-really-but-really asking if Simpson really murdered his wife back in 1994, to which he got the reply “Well first of all, she wasn’t my wife”. Interesting part of the question to be focusing on.
Sadly, Baron Cohen’s efforts go nowhere and the interview kind of ends on a limp exchange when he says “We’re both, how you say, ladykillers”, to which Simpson laughingly replies “No, I didn’t kill nobody”.
So yeah, if you were expecting some kind of epic last-minute The Jinx-esque confession from Simpson, sorry that doesn’t happen.
The Simpson interview may be a bit of a flop, but it kind of feels like the appropriate ending for Who Is America?: Provocative, cringy, yet ultimately goes nowhere.
There was also no hint of that much-touted Sarah Palin interview that she worked so hard to discredit, which was disappointing. But rather than let all her hard work promoting the show go to waste, Baron Cohen did slip one final dig at Palin in the credits.
The #WhoIsAmerica finale ended with a special credit for Sarah Palin… https://t.co/FV67zSZvBZ pic.twitter.com/aDtzhwByL6
— Matt Wilstein (@mattwilstein) August 27, 2018
Totally worth sitting through the OJ Simpson interview.