James Cameron responds to claims that O.J. Simpson was originally cast as The Terminator

James Cameron has responded to claims that O.J. Simpson was originally cast as The Terminator – a role that ultimately went to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The rumour began a few years ago after Schwarzenegger told The Independent that ‘it was actually O.J. Simpson that was the first-cast Terminator’.

Yep, that’s the O.J. Simpson who was accused of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ronald Goldman - the case kicking off a highly publicised 11-month trial that attracted global attention as Simpson was given a hugely controversial not guilty verdict on 3 October 1995.

PA Images/Alamy Stock Photo

But Schwarzenegger claimed that, a decade earlier, the former actor and American footballer had been first in line for the titular role in James Cameron’s 1984 action/sci-fi classic The Terminator.

“Somehow [James Cameron] felt that he was not as believable for a killing machine,” he said.

“So then they hired me. That’s really what happened.”

But Cameron has now come out and said that that’s not what happened, despite Arnie’s claims.

Speaking on a recent episode of talk show Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace, Cameron denied the story – admitting that Simpson’s name had very briefly been thrown into the ring, but never went as far as being an actual option.

Wallace asked the director: “Is it true that the studio, in this case, wanted somebody other than Arnold Schwarzenegger to play the Terminator?”

Cameron and Arnie on the set of the second Terminator film. Moviestore Collection Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo

Cameron replied: “Very early on, a highly placed person at one of the two studios that funded that film had a brilliant idea and called me up and said, ‘Are you sitting down?’ I said, ‘Well, no, I’m not.’

“He said, ‘Are you sitting? O.J. Simpson for the Terminator!’ I said, ‘I actually think that’s a bad idea.’ It didn’t go anywhere.”

According to the filmmaker, Simpson’s supposed casting in the film started and ended with that short-lived idea from the studio exec.

He previously revealed that ‘highly placed person’ was Mike Medavoy of Orion, telling the Los Angeles Times in 2019 that Schwarzenegger had also claimed to have a concept drawing of the character sketched by Cameron, which originally had Simpson’s face.

This, Cameron said, was ‘flat-out wrong’, adding: “I didn’t make the painting for him. I made the painting for us, for the production, of him as the Terminator.

“There’s no O.J. under that painting… O.J. Simpson was never in the mix at all. That was rejected out of hand before it ever got any traction.”