Ryan Murphy is assembling his own "dream team" to star in his new true crime series "American Crime Story." The first installment in the anthology series will feature the O.J. Simpson murder trial and Cuba Gooding Jr. has been chosen to play the former football star.
"American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson" will serve as a companion series to Murphy's FX show "American Horror Story." The cable channel will premiere the 10-episode first season next year.
Gooding won an Oscar for best supporting actor in the 1996 film "Jerry Maguire." He appears next in the Martin Luther King Jr. biopic "Selma."
"American Horror Story" actress Sarah Paulson will also star as the prosecutor Marcia Clark. She currently stars on the "AHS" fourth season "Freak Show" and received Emmy nominations for her roles in "AHS: Asylum" and "AHS: Coven."
Murphy will direct the miniseries based on the book "The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson" by Jeffrey Toobin. The story is told from the perspective of the lawyers: the over-confident prosecution on one side and Simpson's crafty defense team that convinced a jury to find reasonable doubt.
"The People vs. Larry Flynt" screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski will pen the first two episodes.
The state of California tried Simpson on two counts of murder: one for the death of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and the other for waiter Ronald Lyle Goldman. Much of the eight-month trial played out on television and many argue race relations played a major part in the final verdict.
