You're Wrong About - The O.J. Simpson Trial: My Fair Paula

Episode Date: January 11, 2021

This week we talk about the early days of Paula and O.J.’s relationship and the celebrity cameos reach either a high or a low point. Digressions include date etiquette,  cat scams and room-temperature Diet Coke. Mike has his head in his hands for long periods. In this episode we discuss domestic abuse, including the violence Nicole Brown Simpson experienced and the circumstances of her 911 calls.Support us:Subscribe on PatreonDonate on PaypalBuy cute merchWhere else to find us: Sarah's other show, Why Are Dads Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseSupport the show

I have notes. I'm very proud. And I've just written like a key point of what happens page by page and so on 49 in bubble letters. I wrote sex. Welcome to You're Wrong About, the podcast that puts history on primetime live but doesn't ask it softball questions. It's beautiful. Thank you. I'm Sarah Marshall. I'm working on a book about the satanic panic. I am Michael Hobbs. I'm a reporter for the Huffington Post. We have a Patreon at patreon.com slash you're wrong about. If you want to support us, you can get one bonus episode a month. Recently, we have talked about the crown. Or you can just listen to the free ones because we do a lot of those too. And today, we're talking about Paula, right? Yes. Okay, I'm so traumatized from all the times that you've switched this up on me. I know. But I never know what to expect now. It's been hard. So, we just did a Paula episode as our last episode of 2020. And now we're doing one for our first episode of 2021. Yeah, tell us, when did we just experience with Paula in the last episode we did? And where are we picking up this whole OJ Simpson story? I am fucking fresh because we just talked about this last week. I am ready. I love it when you're excited to be pop quiz.

So, last week, we went on a little break with Paula. We went to Memphis and we went to Florida. She is estranged from OJ right now because he sent her away before going on the Bronco chase. But then he called a Mulligan and just sort of got back together with her without really sort of proposing that as an idea. He just assumed that she was into it. And she sort of allows him to track her beam her back into this relationship. And then she went back to LA and we left her on an airplane flying from Florida to LA to reunite with OJ and support him during this we now know nine month long trial. Yeah, it makes so much sense to me why in the moment she made the choices that she did and to me what is important to me about this book is that it shows how the moments pile up to become your life. Yeah, that any single decision makes sense, even if the sum total of all of those decisions ends up not being great for her in the long term. Yeah, and I feel like we all have things like that in our life. And then it's like you zoom out. And then you're like, oh my God, I was OK, Simpson's girlfriend. Yeah. And it's like, well, when you put it like that, something I want to talk about now is something that she reminisces about in her book, which is how did the relationship start and when and what were its salad days?

Like when things were good, what was that like? The carrots, the tomatoes, the croutons give it to us. So well, what do you remember about how they met? OK, so I've already blocked out most of what happened in 2020. But I vaguely remember you telling me that Paula met him through a friend, right? They were kind of set up. Well, she ran into Marcus Allen when she was out and about. Yes. And O.J. invited her over to his house.

She said something about, I think it was shoulder pain. And he said, oh, I use this cream on my shoulder when it hurts. And he rubbed it into her shoulder and she was expecting him to make a move or do something really dirt baggy. And he didn't. That made her think like, hey, maybe this guy's different than other dirt baggy dudes that I have dated and have starred in numerous action films. And then they started talking on the phone, right? Yeah. That's their salad.

And also, speaking of that, let's remember that Paula also just had a very brief marriage to a guy named Dean Hamilton. Oh, God, I totally forgot about that guy. Who married her so he could get $8,000. She's had a rough few years. Yeah, it's been rough. So Paula writes, after meeting O.J., I didn't plan to date him. I was still fending off my ex-husband. I was trying to simplify my life and figure out where I'd messed up.

But O.J. was persistent. He called me two nights later from Hawaii, obviously tipsy. Giggly and relaxed and terribly appealing. Yeah, O.J. has a thing with drunk dialing. I wonder how he's doing now that people don't pick up the phone as much anymore. Yeah, I wonder how he's at texting. I'm sure he sends a ton of incomprehensible emojis. And you're like, what?

Why is the flamenco dancer in there? She says, I was flattered, but very hesitant. I done a little security check on O.J. Enough to know that he was one of the most eligible and flirtatious men on the West Coast. But he keeps calling her. They're talking for hours. They talk for a couple weeks. She refuses to go out with him consistently for a while,

which I imagine he might be drawn to. It's also interesting that she frames it as he's one of the most eligible and flirtatious men on the West Coast, as opposed to like someone who lies to get what they want. In the margin, I wrote Mr. Big. Oh, yeah. She writes, most of all, we were fellow searchers. And O.J. I heard my own need to be safe, my grief for a failed marriage.

As broken as I felt, I knew that O.J.'s situation had to be much worse. He'd been with Nicole for 17 years, and he desperately missed living with his children. Why had his marriage soured? O.J. was more sorrowful than accusing. He said he'd worked hard to give his family material comforts. But within their affluent lifestyle, he and Nicole were moving on two separate tracks.

It was as if O.J. said he'd kept trying to buy his wife's love and approval. Not just with gifts and vacations, but by supporting her entire family. He bought and bought until their romance had turned into a transaction. Oh, she's getting O.J. talking points on this marriage. She's getting O.J.'s. I mean, that just factually does not sound accurate. Yeah, I mean, we know that O.J. has a pattern of buying Nicole stuff, and he will have a pattern of buying Paula stuff after some kind of conflict.

Right. We know that he bought her a car after a violent incident. He buys her jewelry. We know that he does this. Right. And we also know that it's an extremely typical counter-accusation when a man is accused of abusive behavior and relationship or cheating or whatever, that he will oftentimes turn around and be like,

oh, she's only dating me for my money or I pay for this lifestyle. Why aren't you grateful? The sort of the relationship between money and romance and men throwing that in women's faces is extremely typical of, like, just trash behavior. I thought you were going to say something more sociological. I like it when you just sort of pivot and just sound like Joan Cusack and something. I petered out.

I'm sorry, I petered out. No, it was great. Yes, I agree. This book is like the call coming from inside the house, and that's why it makes so much sense to me that it really wasn't read very much when it came out and was written about disdainfully, if at all. Because this is someone saying, this is what it is like to be wooed by O.J. Simpson, and this is what it's like to buy what he's selling for years.

Right. And everyone in the media throughout this trial, if they're bothering to wonder about Nicole and about the marriage, it often comes back to the sense of, how could it be? What could happen inside of that relationship? I guess we'll never know. And it's like, yes, we know. We don't know exactly what was inside his relationship with Nicole,

but we know a fair amount about it. And we also have this other person who can tell us what it's like to be in the state of first being intensely wooed by this person and then being strung along, trying to get back to that initial rosy sense of love that you had and that you feel like you're not getting because of something that you did wrong. Right. It's also very interesting how little she seems to be editing her recollections. Yeah.

She sort of just unabashedly puts herself into the mental space that she was in at the courtship of this relationship. She's putting all the red flags in there. It's like when people fall for pedigree cat scams online, which seems to be a weirdly common thing, they'll be like, I should have known. They asked me to Venmo $900 and in retrospect, it was really stupid of me. And Paula Barbieri telling the story would be like,

there was the most amazing kitten and I just knew he needed a home. And I just love that lack of a sense of shame in this too, because people so often will do this sort of, they will suppress how it felt to be in a relationship that is now over. And I think we have to let ourselves remember how it felt like to be the people we once were and not sort of distance ourselves from that or shame ourselves for what we did because just like remembering how good it felt sometimes or what you were trying to get back to or why you were trying to get back to it

is something that allows you to love yourself and the person that you were and have grown in some way from. Yeah. It's hard to confront the things you told yourself to stay in a bad situation. It's like all the kids who were really into the new kids on the block in elementary school and then pretended that they never had been. But I remember those jackets. I remember your trapper keeper.

So Paula and OJ continue to talk on the phone. And so she says, at last I gave in. I agreed to come out to Brentwood and take a walk. My first date with OJ and she wears a summer sweater and cowboy boots. And they take a walk around. They hold hands. They talk about musicals because OJ loves musicals. Really?

Yeah. And Paula writes, when OJ found out that I'd never seen my fair lady, he got all enthusiastic. You have to rent it and watch it later on. Man, it's like an actual stage of a relationship where like the man makes you watch his things. At least his thing in this situation is my fair lady. I know.

It could be worse. It could be like Boondock Saints. So he says, I'd like you to be my fair lady. And then they have their first kiss. And so they watch my fair lady. That's a cute date. Except for this part. She says, watching my fair lady with OJ was a multimedia experience.

He knew most of the dialogue by heart in all of the songs. Oh no. And he sang along with each one of them. Oh. He wasn't the greatest singer in the world. He'd hit about two notes out of three. But he loved to sing and never got embarrassed. I just went from like, this is romantic to get me out of here.

This is the idea of watching a musical that you've never seen with somebody and they're singing over it the whole time. Yeah. Which I did a little bit when we watched clips from Newsies, but like I really restrained myself. But luckily he gets distracted by deciding to make out with her. And my fair lady has an intermission in it. By that time she says, we were lying down, cuddled together.

I noticed that OJ's eyes kept flitting from the screen. Whenever he talked to me, they were fixed on my summer sweater. Oh my God. To be precise, he was talking to my breasts. Yeah, Paula. I'm up here. I'm up here. I said, laughing.

And then he was up there too for another kiss. This one more searching. I hadn't been with a man since my marriage. She ended five months earlier and I was thirsting for physical affection. Oh Paula. So it's great because they have that, that date. And then, you know, we cut to like any way they're dating now, the relationship has begun.

Okay. What do women love? They love having you ruin a musical for them. It's like a Prince of Persuasion command. Never let her hear a musical. When I make my boyfriend watch all three How to Train Your Dragon movies, I will be dead silent. Like a fucking corpse.

I was reading this book and I was like, so how many pages of things going well? Do we get? And the answer is like zero because page 42, they make out during my fair lady and then there's page break and then they're dating. And then on page 43, he takes Nicole and the kids to Disneyland and lies to Paula about it.

Oh shit. So that was the glory days. That was the glory day. Yeah. And then also after they start dating, she writes, once we started going out, Oji gave me a videotape of his greatest athletic hits. I was moved to see him carry the torch at the 1968 Olympics

and bowled over by his football highlights. Run Paula. I know. These are all like, look how cool I am stuff. At least he's not singing over it the whole time. So she's basically yada, yada, yada in the good days of the relationship. Yeah. And then he gave me a date and then he gave me a video

and then he invited me on a golf date with Marcus and Catherine and then when I came down to join them, he got on a cart and drove away real fast. Cute. And then she writes, I got over that small disappointment only to be confronted with a bigger one. Oji came out to my condo late one Sunday and I could tell something was wrong by how subdued he was.

You know, I really like you and I need to tell you this. He said, I lied to you when I said I was playing golf today. I was at Disneyland with Nicole and the kids. Seeing me knocked off balance. Okay. Earnestly went on. I want our relationship to be honest and you need to know this had nothing to do with Nicole.

It was just a day for the children. I keep thinking about my friend who went on a date with somebody on like a Wednesday and then I remember the next day. I was like, hey, how'd the date go? And they were like, you know, we had some tense moments and like we got in a bit of a fight over dinner, but you know, we're going to try to work through it and really try to make this work.

Oh my God. I understand why Paula didn't walk away, but it's such a red flag when you're already having this much plot, this early in a relationship. Like it should be really boring at this point. Like we both really like each other. We get along great. Yeah.

There shouldn't be plot for like three weeks. Yeah, exactly. Something that I'm thinking as I'm reading this page is that like, I can say all this and I can know all of this consciously, but also in my heart, I feel like clicking and having like energy with someone and feeling truly desired by someone feels rare to me. Oh, totally.

Yeah. And I can say all this and do this episode and then I might like go ahead and later this year meet someone totally unsuitable who like sucks, but who I click with and feel happy with sometimes. And like my brain will know one thing and my click parts will know other stuff. Yeah.

And I know in my brain and in like some parts of my body that like that isn't rare. Like clicking seems rare. I think as a function of insecurity and loneliness and like not meeting enough people or the right people or just it doesn't have to be like there's so many people for all of us to feel that way about. I should also be transparent about the fact

that I have never taken this advice. Yeah. No. I have never successfully like clocked someone as being like, this is going to be difficult. I don't think this is going to work out for us. Like I have done exactly what Paula is doing, like fallen into this abyss of another broken person

so many times. Yeah. I mean, I've walked away from potential relationships, but with people who like I didn't like. Yes. If I like someone and I think they're going to be a nightmare then like I don't care. I know.

Yeah. She talks about how he smells. He smells like vanilla and citrus. Which again, it's like no one smells like vanilla. Everyone just smells like nothing or sweat. And so when someone smells like something to you, it's like you're smelling your connection. You're smelling the magic juice flowing between you.

Does she ever talk about him asking her anything about her career, her upbringing, her anything? You know, I feel like she says that he does that, but I can't think of a moment in dialogue when that happens. It just seems like she's not necessarily monitoring the extent to which he's not like investing in her all that much. Like what are her movies? What does she sing along to?

Well, and I think that like they share things that they like and she mentions that like there are musicians that they both like and there's movies they both enjoy. So I think it's like she can enjoy the stuff that she enjoys with him if he himself already likes it. Did I tell you I once broke up with somebody and they were like, no, we have such a connection. It's so good.

And then I was like, what do I do for a living? What do I do? He's like, you work in human rights. I was like, no, I do a very specific thing in human rights that is not that fucking hard to remember. If you know what it is, sorry. Oh my God. I know.

And this is like, I feel like there are people who will say to you like we have such a connection. And it's like, you feel that we have a connection because I listen to you. But in fact, we could be talking to like a chatbot or a hole in a tree. Right. So OJ and Paula still haven't had sex. And he invites her down for a weekend in his house in Laguna and says that Marcus and Catherine will be there

because he seems to be using them as foils a lot. At least he dates Paula. And then Paula figures out as they're on the way there that actually Marcus and Catherine won't be there. Oh. And she says his game was up. Well, I knew you wouldn't go unless I told you they'd be there. He said, trying to sound apologetic,

but knowing I wasn't really angry. And truth, I appreciated OJ's craftiness. Oh my God. So it's basically like, in my defense, I was lying for personal gain. Yes. He's like, well, you know, yeah, I lied to you, but I needed to get something I wanted for you. Right.

And I knew that you wouldn't give it to me without false pretenses. So whose fault is it really, Paula? So she writes, some girls get excited by flowers or candy. Others by champagne or soft jazz. But for me, one aphrodisiac beat all the rest. Intimate conversation. No man had ever talked to me like OJ. That night he was on his best form.

We talked about family and friends, our careers and our dreams. Most of all, we talked about our feelings for each other. I don't know. So they go down to the beach and she takes off her clothes and jumps into the water and she writes, I assume that OJ would follow. Here I was naked and hot in the ocean. I might as well have held up a neon sign.

Take me here. Take me now. But OJ just stood there and laughed and watched. I didn't know then how uncomfortable he was around the water. Okay. I hate sand. He whispered apologetically. So his other favorite movie is Attack of the Clones.

So she wants to have this romantic moment. He brings her back inside and then they go to the bedroom and he says, aren't you going to your room? He smiled like a little boy who just found a hidden treasure. I shook my head. I wanted him so much. And then they undress and they start the kissing and she writes, as my lips moved down his side,

OJ gently cupped my head and told me to stop. As a director of the scene, he wanted to stay in control. I don't know that I need a whole lot of detail on this sex scene. I know. I know. I'm going through what I'm not. I'm giving you the minimum. Trust me.

There's a lot of verbiage here. I don't know how deep to go. I'm giving you the light, the light version of this book. Thank you. OJ's hands roved down my body. I started talking to my breasts as if they were two other girls. You are beautiful, he said to the right one. Then he kissed the left one and said, I'm not ignoring you.

Our foreplay was brief, which was fine by me, since I was working on endless anticipation. The summary of a lot of heterosexual romances is, which was fine with me. OJ pinned me to the bed and took control of me, practically smothering me with the mass of his body. The thought exhilarated me more so than the act itself. Was it the alcohol?

Too much buildup in my imagination? In any case, our fantasy ended too quickly for me. Yet I wasn't disappointed. It's hard to explain, but the simple fact of our intimacy had fulfilled me, though the love making itself had been less than satisfying. So they had like mediocre sex and she's talking herself into thinking it's no big deal.

OJ was done and there would be no more conversation that night, not with my breasts and not with me. He quickly fell asleep, still giddy with my thoughts. I left them on the bed and resumed my skinny dip. I was alone and free or so I thought. Only later would I realize that my freedom was an illusion. And what's funny is that like what she describes during the salad days parts of the book is that like,

it's very sexy to be with him in public. Like he's always touching her and kissing her and she gets really turned on. But then when they actually have sex, it's just like basically like what she gets described. I feel like hot people need to know the warning signs of being a trophy partner. He's sort of exuberant and sort of showing you off

in public and being all charming in public. And then that just turns totally off the minute you're in private. That is a warning sign that you're at somebody's trophy. I guess I've never had that problem. But this seems like something that models should be briefed about. Yeah. I feel like it's a great depiction of how it feels to like be given an inch by someone and feel emotionally

as if you've been given a mile. Right. I think anyone who hasn't had big feelings or been just flat out in love with someone who's like semi available knows what it's like to heartily believe a conspiracy theory because you have to. Like I've had personal conspiracy theories

about how people feel about me. It's also an interesting inversion because she's seeing the way that he treats her in public when he's performing for other people as real. Like that's the real him. That's our real relationship. The whole idea of sort of who somebody really is is silly, right?

Like we're all ourselves all the time. But if you're going to have a rubric of like this is the real relationship and this is the performance aspect, surely you should be doing it the other way around. Yeah. The way that he's treating you in private is the relationship. Yeah.

And also I feel like the public OJ is like the better one. Yes. And she talks about this right after the disappointing sex. It's like disappointing sex, whatever it's fine. And then we go to how is the relationship functioning and at this point it's largely in airports because she's flying around modeling. He's flying around doing his OJ stuff.

Right. Pro-am, golf, whatever. They'll have a coffee or a meal in an airport and then he'll inevitably have to sign a bunch of autographs which we've talked about before and we've talked about how she gets to see this public-facing OJ that people love and that people have always loved

because he has this just sort of warmth and affection for just any fan who comes up to him that like seems to be better than what he has to offer in private. Right. And she says, it meant everything to make OJ smile and look at me in that smoldering way of his. After our night by the beach together it was as if the dam had burst.

I wanted OJ all the time. And that, however, OJ was hardly the sexual Superman that the world may have assumed. He never went down as they say in football. Do they say that in football? I don't know if they say that. I don't know. I don't know.

Maybe they do. His lips worked best in telling me how much he loved me not in exploring my body. For myself, that was more than a fair trade. I mean, okay. It feels to me like he's very clearly using her for her looks and because she's not necessarily aware of herself as smoking hot because women are constantly told that they're not hot enough

no matter how conventionally hot they are. She doesn't necessarily see that like, yeah, I'm really hot and he's using me for my hotness. You're just really fucking hot, Paula. And he likes being seen in public with you and he thinks you're hot and likes talking to your breasts and touching you and stuff. But he doesn't actually like you that much.

But you can't admit that to yourself because that would require you to admit that you're hot and actually believe that, which I don't think any woman especially really does. That's a really good point, actually. Wow. Yeah, because then it's like, it's easier to say we just have this amazing connection

because if you think you have this amazing connection with someone and that's the basis of the relationship, you don't have to acknowledge that you provide objective value to them. Right. Wow. Okay, this is kind of a breakthrough. Nice. Paula, if you're listening.

Paula, if you're listening, we love you so much. I know Paula, we don't blame you for anything. It's fine. It happens. Okay. We paused right before a couple of really ridiculous quotes. So I hope you're ready. Give me.

So this is Kill Eye 1992. They've only been seeing each other for a couple of months at this point. She says he always wanted to be on top, not just to control the situation, but to keep my appetiting check and preserve his strength for the next morning's golf game. He loved my long legs. They just go on forever, don't they?

He's got a lot of long legs. He caressed them up and down. He bragged about my body to our friends. She may not look it, but she has really nice breasts. She may not look it. She's a model. I don't even know what that means. I don't know what that means.

It's like kind of a neg. Of course. Oh yeah. It's a huge neg. It's like she's secretly, like she low key has really nice breasts. Like breasts are visible. He's not talking about her kidneys or something.

But she says, okay, made me feel like he needed me. He made me feel like the center of his universe. And to him, I believed. And then he has a big 45th birthday party in July at Rockingham. And they have this big toast. And he gets her up there and he says to the girl who has changed my life,

then they have this big public kiss. And five minutes later, he kisses someone else. Oh God, who does he kiss? A petite blonde who'd arrived with an NBC executive. Not great. Oh. O.K. flirted every day of his life. A look here, a smile there.

Mostly I ignored it because I knew it wasn't serious. Just a game, some men play. But that kiss was disrespectful. Yes. And I asked some friends to drive me home. Look, I'm really sorry. I was an idiot. O.K. said when he rang me the next morning,

I had too much to drink. It wasn't like it seemed. Oh my God. And she says, you can't blame it on the alcohol. And he says, you have to forgive me. Which is like, I don't have to do anything. He doesn't say that. But that's what you could say.

Yeah. And he begs her to let him take her somewhere to talk. And guess where he takes her? McMenamins. Now he takes her to a jewelry store. Oh. And he buys her a ring. This is why it's so important to teach people

abuse manipulation dynamics in schools. We're doing all these trainings for high school kids about like how to look for the warning signs of trafficking or whatever when like the fucking warning signs that like you're in a really toxic relationship are pretty standard and like much more common. Yeah. I feel as if it's worth teaching kids and emphasizing the

concept of like if you're in a relationship with someone who makes you feel bad all the time, then like you shouldn't be in that relationship. Like your relationship shouldn't be the main reason you're unhappy. It should be like your job or your back or mortality. Right. Your primary relationship in your life should be making

your life better. It also feels to me like men are never briefed on this shit of like if you are doing these things, you are an asshole. Right. Or like you may be engaging in an abuse dynamic. Yeah. And you might not be consciously aware of that. In fact, you're probably not.

But this pattern that you're locked in of exploding at someone and then buying them something to wipe the slate clean. Right. Is not going anywhere positive for anyone. And also fellows, if other fellows are doing this, you should call them up on it. Like these sort of very basic dynamics don't seem to have trickled into the public consciousness.

Yeah. In the way that like watch for people in white vans have. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's why Love Actually is such an important movie because like the speed at which that movie has aged badly. It's like room temperature diet coke. Okay.

And then here is something that she doesn't mention to Diane Sawyer and that later on she talks about something that she maybe should have mentioned to Diane Sawyer. So this is still July 1992. She and OJ go to Laguna. They go out to dinner with Marcus and Catherine who do come this time and they're playing pool and she writes in the middle of our game, a man asked me some harmless question.

It wasn't a come on and I answered without thinking twice. But OJ had noticed my open body language. I was leaning against the rail with one arm over my head and he assumed the worst. He put down his cue and walked out. I knew he was furious. Oh my God. So they all leave.

They get in the Bronco. OJ accuses her of flirting with the guy. It escalates to shouting and she says, I don't put up with verbal attacks. My first instinct is to leave. Look, I told OJ, I'm just going to go home. I picked up the Bronco's cell phone and started to dial a car service and OJ grabbed the phone and knocked it out of my hand,

hurting me. As soon as we got to the beach house, I jumped out of the car and ran into the downstairs master bedroom. I locked the door and threw my things into a bag. By that time, OJ was knocking at the door full-fisted, demanding to be let in. I yelled at him to go away. I was angry and frightened and I didn't want to deal with him.

Open this door, OJ barked, or I'm going to kick it down. As he kept banging, I got more and more frantic. I picked up my things and called a car service and then burst into tears and hung up after getting put on hold. Open the door, OJ hollered. The banging got louder. I curled up in a ball in the farthest corner of the room. What could I do?

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, I decided to leave and find a taxi. Feeling defeated, I opened the door and walked by OJ to get past him, but he grabbed my bag. And as we stood nose to nose in the doorway, I could see how ashamed he was. I'm so sorry, he said softly. I love you.

I never want to hurt you. As you might have guessed, I wound up staying. Aww. Aww. I mean, she grew up in a house where this kind of shit was happening all the time. Yeah. You know?

Well, and she says too. She says just a little bit later. It might sound naive, but I'd promised myself years before that no man would lay his hands on me without feeling really sorry. And then she tells a story where she, like, karate-choffed Stolf Lundgren. Okay. You know?

And she talks about, like, she grew up with her mom being beaten up by her stepfather. Yeah. And after this abuse event, like, O.J., according to her, like, they go swimming, they make up, or she goes swimming. And then he tells her about the 1989 911 call that Nicole made where O.J. beat her very severely. And this is how Paula hears it.

Then he told me about the now famous incident in 1989 after he and Nicole came home from a New Year's Eve party. They got into a huge argument, O.J. said, and Nicole started screaming and breaking their Tiffany lamps. Oh, my God. I was trying to push her out of the bedroom, and she fell down. O.J. explained. Oh, my God.

The police came, he added, and he eventually pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor. Right then and there, O.J. said, emphatically, I swore that I'd never lay hands on another woman like that. Oh, my God. I wasn't sure how to react. My mother was a battered woman, and O.J.'s story took me back to some scary days and nights.

But though I'd be horribly embarrassed to face Marcus and Catherine the next morning, I felt good about O.J.'s candor with me. I could tell that he'd waged a big struggle with himself to control his temper. I wanted to believe that the fight with Nicole was an isolated incident, which is what he's describing it to her has, even though we know that it's not. Yeah, he's giving her a fucking redemption arc.

This is the problem. Yeah. Again, when you admit the weaknesses in your argument, it gives you more credibility. He's basically planting seeds that in case she hears something about him being abusive toward Nicole, or in case he blows up in anger at her, it's like, oh, I know that I've done that in the past.

I'm admitting to it fully. I'm giving you the full story, the harsh truth. But I've reformed when, in fact, he's not fucking telling her the truth about what happened. It was much more severe than that, and it wasn't just like, oh, she started throwing lamps, and then I maybe overreacted. Fuck no. It's a thing where your parents catch you sneaking out past curfew

and you admit to what they already know. Yeah, it's like being like, wow, I can't believe the only time I have ever smoked weed in my room, you caught me doing it. Also, when she says, you know, I never experienced violence from OJ, I mean, I don't know what the legal definitions are. I'm sure there's debate over this,

but someone banging on a door when you've locked yourself in a room and bellowing at you, like that feels like violence to me. I know, right? I mean, this is like also, we talked about this before, but when this all goes to trial, this is the debate around the other 911 call where he's banging on Nicole's door in a very similar way and does break the door, and people are able to be like,

well, you know, we don't hear, we don't know that he hit her. We just know that he broke in her front door, and it's like that's terrorizing someone in their home. Like the one place in the world where they have a reasonable expectation to feel safe, like it's someone signaling to you, like I can hurt you by the way. Yeah, it's also fascinating how easy he lies about this too. Oh yeah.

And this is 100% an act of manipulation. Like there's no reason to do any of this other than to get Paula to stay. Yeah, to get Paula to stay and also to continue to convince himself that he's fine and he's never going to do that again, and it was Nicole's fault. Yeah. So they make up and she says, but that moment in the Bronco was the only time he'd ever touched me in anger.

In the months and years that followed, he never struck me, at least not in the ways that show bruises. The truth is, I felt closer than ever to OJ after our fight in Laguna. When it was over, I was the Terry one. I was touched by OJ's shame and by his eagerness to be better. I mean, I guess nobody ever entertains the possibility that the person they're dating is a masterful manipulator. And again, he's doing that thing where he's turning the trauma

that he's just put her through into something that they both get to triumph over together. Yeah, God. And so in Paula's book, they have this, you know, altercation where he treats her the way that he treated Nicole. And then we cut to, they go to the Barcelona Olympics and they watch the dream team and they eat paella and they're in Europe and who can even remember what happened last month? And then they walk around the city wearing something gaudy.

I'm so happy you're able to make Europe puns. I had that ready. And so basically it's like we cut back to salad days and then we close this chapter with a story where Paula's ex-dean who married her so he could get $8,000 shows up in her house and wants to talk to her and she lets him in and then, you know, OJ happens to show up and then he sees her ex leaving and it's like she thinks that he's going to find that really suspicious.

And he comes in and basically the fact that he takes this not badly, I think is sort of the proof that like they're out of the woods for now. He didn't get all upset about a man being in her home. It's a low bar. It's a low bar. And again, it's like they have this difficult scene but Paula feels like it brings them closer together and she says, our passion still burned

but it was laced with a caring and gentleness that made it even more powerful. At the start of our romance, OJ had declared, as far as I'm concerned, you were a virgin until the day we met. Now I saw he was as good as his word. Oh my God, Paula! As I snuggled up against him, I admitted that I still felt responsible for Dean. OJ cut to the heart of it.

Why do you need to take care of everyone? Your mother, your father, your brothers, even this guy who takes advantage of you. It's like, OJ, this is like me going to the Caesars Palace, and now you can eat Bacchanal buffet and being like, why do you give away crab legs? This is a terrible business model. You shouldn't have this many crab legs

as I'm piling my plate entirely full of crab legs. Don't psychoanalyze Paula, OJ. That's what we do. We're doing this because we like Paula and we want the best for Paula. We're not using this against Paula to manipulate her into dating us. Not yet.

Although Paula, if you're out there. So before we jump ahead to 1994 and to Paula flying back to California, I want to flash forward and also back to a moment in 1993, which is just like of no great significance to the relationship really, but is significant to our cast of characters

in recent American life. Oh, no. And I have a picture to show you. Oh, look at her crop top bearing that midriff. Who is she with? Oh, shit. It's OJ and Paula and Donald Trump. She is between OJ Simpson and Donald Trump.

Oh, God. The metaphor, the symbolism, Sarah. The everything. Like this is a picture of America. I realize that this is a tangent, but it feels like it's a timely tangent right now. Oh, take me. The trial itself reminds me of the Trump presidency

because here we have a man who has spent his entire life contriving of ever more elaborate ways to deny what he has done. We know he's someone who can't describe accurately his past relationships as a consequence for this inability. He is going to be made the center of a year long media spectacle,

really a year and a half long. In a way one that has never really ended, because here we are. The fact that he's not going to testify on his own behalf in this trial, that we're not going to hear from him in the defendant's role means that every single thing he does has to be dissected.

I don't know. I just don't know what to make of this sort of pattern. Where someone who was a public figure and stayed in the public eye partly by consistently lying about themselves lied so hard and so much that their lies made them the most important person in the entire country. And someone who people went home and thought about

and talked about every day. There is a line from a movie that I really like and I know that you like it too because you guys just covered it on your podcast. The line in the Royal Tenant Bombs where the voiceover says immediately after saying it, Royal realized it was true. There are people that go through life

just sort of saying things and coming to revelations or coming to narratives or coming to quote unquote truth after they've said it. They're listening to themselves, manipulate other people and agreeing with themselves. Right. And just if you're working in sheer quantity, if you see people responding to something,

you lean into that, you kind of riff for a while. I mean, it's one of the great ironies of this case that O.J. Simpson did not speak during it because he's such a talker and everyone who describes having a relationship with him and being charmed by it, describes his verbal charm as such a big part of it. And I feel like in a way,

even though people were watching that trial for an entire year, they didn't really see him. Yeah. So according to Paula, the relationship started to get rocky in December of 1992. Okay. We've already heard about the alleged salad days of Paula and O.J.'s relationship.

They get together in May of 1992. So this is six months later. We've been tossing salads all episode. So it's December. She's flown to New York to see him for a Christmas party. She says O.J. was busy with an interview that day and would be coming late. I passed some time with John Casablanca,

elite chairman, whom I dated earlier in my modeling career. Enter Donald Trump. Oh, no. Donald came up to me in that self-important way of his and gave me a dose of the famous Trump charm. Ew. We started talking about golf.

Donald bragged that he had a scratch handicap, but he clearly had other sport in mind. You know, he told me his eyes searching mine. I just want to meet a nice, quiet girl who wants to have a family. He was about as subtle as a sledgehammer. Play my cards right, he was implying, and I might be that lucky girl.

As I laughed myself about the whole situation, Donald handed me his phone number. That very moment, O.J. arrived and walked up behind me. Oh, look, honey, I said, taking the card and passing it on to O.J. Donald wants you to play golf with him when he got a chance. O.J. instinctively put his arm around me. But I could see that he and Donald

made a sort of boys' connection at that party. Birds of a feather. Later on, when I told O.J. about Donald's advances, he shrieked it off. That's normal, he said. A guy sees a pretty girl and he's going to hit on her, but now he knows you're my girl, and he won't do that anymore.

It's so weird, like the boys' code shit, where she chats to a guy at a bar and he freaks out, but then a guy actually like blatantly hits on her and he's like, eh, it's no big deal. Right, because the fact that she has agency at all is a threatening thing. So, after this meet cute for all three of them, Paula tells a story where she's going to go

visit O.J. on Valentine's Day, and he's like, cool, I'm staying at the Ritz. I have a roommate who I'm sharing a room with, and she's like, why the fuck do you have a roommate at the Ritz Carlton? And then of course, what that means is that she calls O.J.'s room, what is alleged to be O.J.'s room, and this other guy answers, and he's like,

O.J.'s out right now. But then by two in the morning, like it's obvious to everyone that this is a lie. And so Paula flies down to Florida to meet up with him. And she says, when I opened the door, it was like walking into a plant store. The room overflowed with flowers.

I picked up a greeting card on the table and read the inscription. I love you girl, you're the only one for me. Something seemed off kilter. O.J. was sitting in his bathrobe, but the bed was made as if he hadn't touched it. The room was spotless. When I visited the bathroom, there wasn't a drop

of water on the floor. The shower hadn't been used. So she calls her friend Kim, who lives in Miami. She's like, hi Kim, we're in town. I know we're in town. I saw O.J. at Sinatra's bar a couple days ago. And so she's like, hey O.J. Kim says she saw you here a couple nights ago,

even though you say you just got to town today. And he's like, that's bullshit. Who do you believe, her or me? Bold strategy. This continues, this escalates into a fight. And then just this whole, I mean, we're going to get into this more when we get to this

phase of the relationship later on. But right now I want to just jump ahead to O.J. eventually confessing after a lot of back and forth and a lot of yelling and throwing things. O.J. says you were right.

I lied and I'm really sorry. Here was O.J.'s explanation. In New York, he'd run into Sean Penn, who was taking some people to Miami in his private plane. O.J. had finished his work early, so he joined them and flew down ahead. Well, why didn't you just tell me? I said, I didn't want to hassle

with explaining it all to you, O.J. said. That made no sense. Yeah, it's like an eight-word explanation. Well, and it's funny too. It's not funny, it's tragic, but like, that's a very like, there's a lot of domestic abuse in Sean Penn's story too, you know.

And you just are like, are there non-garbage men around Paula at all? Or is she just surrounded by like, megalomaniac rich people and celebrities? I've never noticed such a sewer tour of 90s men. Ah.

So anyway, she knows something else is up and then she writes, over time, I'd find out what really happened in South Florida that weekend. Donald Trump hadn't planned a party in Palm Springs as O.J. had told me. The party was set instead for Palm Beach

and O.J. was fishing to make sure I didn't know about it. Donald hired two big buses to pick up the elite models based in Miami and wanted to be there to join the fun. The roommate at the Ritz Carlton, the guy O.J. had planted to cover for him, was part of a big calculated plan.

This is also gross. Say more about that. It's just like premeditated cheating. It is, yeah, it's first degree cheating. Yeah, people should not be doing this. And so in conclusion, I don't know, I guess this story about like, Donald Trump

probably helping O.J. Simpson cheat on his girlfriend. It's like an image of Paula standing between Donald Trump and O.J. Simpson and just have a Viking funeral for it. Like, let's let this be emblematic of the things that we are trying to leave behind.

And if you need to tape a photo of Sean Penn onto it before you do it, have at it. You're not going to hear any objections from us. You know what? Add whoever you need to. You might end up with a whole Sergeant Pepper's. And so, I can imagine Paula thinking about all of this

and much more as she's flying back to L.A. in mid-August, 1994 looking back on now. Do you like my smooth transition? Are you doing like a little dooloo dooloo dooloo dooloo? Let's do the Thelmin Louise ending. That was quite good, Sarah.

That was very good. I was feeling like that until you started making fun of me. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. That was very good. Continue. Back to L.A., and after she gets to L.A., she comes to visit her man.

So in her book, she writes, you couldn't miss O.J.'s new address. It was squat and beige and ugly with a billboard of a sign and bright orange letters. Los Angeles County Sheriff Men's Central Jail. She goes there with Kathy Randa, O.J.'s assistant,

and Paula says there are 50 cameras mobbing them. This is mid-August, so at this point it's like the O.J. Simpson saga, which won't go to trial until the following January, is basically already a major food group for media.

And I think the question day by day is like what little wrinkle, what's the story going to be today? What's going to happen that's the newest little chapter in this Judge Parker of the story? And on that day, it is Paula showing up at the L.A. County Jail

for the first time. So she gets through the press and into the building, which the journalists aren't allowed to go into, and she meets up with Bob Shapiro. And she says to him, before I go in there, I've got to tell you something.

What do you think that is? She stopped buying chunky monkey at the store? She says, for weeks my biggest fear had been that I'd wake up one morning to hear my dear John message blasted over the airwaves. And he no longer had a woman in his life.

And if that were the case, it could support the theory that he'd killed Nicole in a jealous rage. Really bad news for the defense. I'll put someone on it, Bob said. As it developed, neither Bob's detective nor the press ever turned up my message.

O.J.'s computerized answering service may have automatically erased it. Or maybe he did it himself. Wait, so what she's basically saying? There's evidence for O.J.'s motive? Please get rid of it? Careful listeners will notice that what she has deliberately said

is that that could be bad for the defense because someone who thinks he might have committed these murders regardless of the truth could use this effectively in that theory. Paul is thinking like a lawyer. I mean, his girlfriend broke up with him

and he got into a fight with Nicole. The night that he killed her doesn't look great. The details for this book are it doesn't look great and nevertheless. So she talks to Bob about this. This is like the thing that's been gnawing at her.

And then she goes through a metal detector. She says, O.J. was seated in the farthest glass room. I put on my biggest grin and opened the glass door to the last cubicle. It was a tiny space with barely enough room for three chairs across.

O.J. and I were separated in a little glass on top of it. We weren't allowed to touch, but we were seeing each other's eyes and breathing the same stale air. For a starved and lonely person like me, that was a feast. O.J. welcomed me with a self-conscious smile.

Rubbing his face, he broke my heart as he said, look at me. You look good, I said, almost too percly. I thought you were going to look a lot worse. I really did. I looked terrible, O.J. said, but you look great. O.J. was putting up his best front,

but his torment was never far beneath the surface. Behind his forced smile, he was a man who'd lost everything but his pain. Why is God doing this to me, O.J. wailed? I didn't do it. I never killed anyone. I can't understand why this is happening. Okay.

And they're visiting time ends and O.J. asks her to leave because he doesn't want to see the guard put him back in handcuffs. And so then she goes back to Rockingham in O.J.'s house. What do you make of her meeting with O.J.? I almost don't make anything of it

because I'm just like, of course it was like that. Of course you were excited to see him. It's been two and a half months. Of course, he was licking all pitiful. He was in jail. It's awful to see anyone who you love or have loving feelings for in jail.

How could she leave now? What really is so clear about Paula in this book and what makes something that went on for as long as it did is that she feels secure in the role of a caretaker and he wants someone to take care of him. Right. A lot of times that's what relationships are.

You're just somebody's giving you an opportunity to act out a role that you feel comfortable playing. Yeah. There's also the thing of like, you can be in mediocre relationships for very long when just sort of the circumstances align. Oh yeah. It's like, oh yeah, your lease is ending.

So like I guess we should move in together because some just died so like we can't really break up. Yeah. And like those circumstantial reasons can supply you with like years of staying in it. Yeah. I think sometimes mediocre relationships are the longest lived because an uneventful mediocre relationship

it can be something that takes up so little space in your life that that becomes a reason to keep it going. And I think he is sort of aware on some level of the mediocreness of this relationship in a way that she is not.

Yeah. Well because he's done this so many times before. Yeah. Like I'm sure that there have been many Paulas in his life and just you know people have different needs when they're in jail. Yes. Yes. So next week we're going to talk about somebody named Shannon Faulkner

and then the OJ Simpson story will continue. But Mike, who do you want to hear about or what do you want to hear about? Do you have any big questions right now? I want to know what's going on with Marsha. Do you want to hear about the investigation? I have a spoiler for you which is that Marsha is not going to make a ton of headway on her wall

after this case comes into her life. Okay. That's unfortunate. Yeah. And I was looking at our previous episodes and my intention was to kind of do a first season. I mean my intention initially was just to be done with all of this in a few episodes and then it just kept stretching out

and I was like okay. Remember when you were like I think we're going to do the OJ series in three episodes? Do you remember that conversation? Yeah. That's one of the funniest things I've ever said. And you had it all outlined? I did. I had it outlined, Mike. I did. And it was like the murders,

the trial, the aftermath. And I don't know at this point how many I think it should be because the desire to move forward in linear time is one of our problems in our attempt to understand information. And maybe this has just been a joyless

slog. No. I know that you've had at least some joy. I'm talking to listeners too. I'm sure a lot of listeners love this and I'm sure a lot don't and are like please get to the goddamn trial. To people who feel that way, I respect you and I appreciate the validity

of that desire and no. You