There’s a prevalent rumor that the role of the villainous T-800 in The Terminator was offered to O.J. Simpson before it was offered to Arnold Schwarzenegger, but whether there’s any truth to that rumor has been called into question. James Cameron’s action-packed tech-noir turned him from the guy who got fired from Piranha II into one of Hollywood’s most sought-after directors. The role of the eponymous killer cyborg in The Terminator launched Schwarzenegger to stardom. He’s still synonymous with the phrase “I’ll be back” and he dusts off the leather jacket to reprise the role in a reboot every few years. Now that it’s the defining role of his career, it’s impossible to imagine anyone besides Schwarzenegger playing the Terminator. But, if rumors are to be believed, the part was almost played by a much more controversial figure.
The Terminator revolves around a near-indestructible killing machine, the T-800, going back in time to assassinate Sarah Connor, the mother of resistance leader John Connor, erasing his existence and preventing the human revolution against the machines. At the same time, John sends his friend Kyle Reese back in time to protect Sarah. While Sarah is the everywoman and audience surrogate and Reese is the badass action hero who stands between her and the metallic monster, the titular Terminator is the star-making role in this movie. It ended up making a star out of Schwarzenegger, but if a meddling studio executive had his way, it would’ve been an ominous precursor to a real-life murder trial.
An Executive Pitched O.J. Simpson To James Cameron
It’s true that Simpson was up for the part of the Terminator, but the stories about his involvement in the film’s development have been blown way out of proportion. In an appearance on Chris Wallace’s HBO Max talk show Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace (via Variety), Cameron clarified how close Simpson came to clinching the role of the T-800: “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.”
In a separate interview with the Los Angeles Times, Cameron named Orion Pictures’ Mike Medavoy as the executive who pitched Simpson, but he reiterated that the suggestion was “rejected out of hand before it ever got any traction.” Simpson’s agent never got a call, Cameron never met with him, and there was no official offer – it never extended beyond a name mentioned in passing on a phone call. The Terminator would’ve marked Simpson’s first major movie role. Instead, he ended up getting his big acting break with the comedic role of Detective Nordberg in The Naked Gun films, a drastically different kind of character than the T-800.
Arnold Schwarzenegger Originated The Story
The rumor that Simpson was the first choice to play the Terminator began with Schwarzenegger. In an interview with The Independent, the Austrian Oak said, “It was actually O.J. Simpson that was the first cast Terminator.” Schwarzenegger joked that Cameron “felt that [Simpson] was not as believable for a killing machine” – the irony, of course, being that a decade later, Simpson would be on trial for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. After Schwarzenegger gave this interview, Simpson’s early casting was circulated around the media as a juicy piece of behind-the-scenes gossip. It’s often included on trivia pages about The Terminator and the internet has its fair share of Photoshop pieces replacing Schwarzenegger with Simpson in iconic scenes from the movie. Given that Simpson was put on trial for terminating a man and a woman, it’s interesting to think that he almost played a Terminator who goes after a man and a woman. But that information is not entirely accurate. Schwarzenegger was right that Simpson was considered for the role, but he was mistaken that Simpson was actually cast in the part and ended up being replaced.
Schwarzenegger said that he has an early piece of concept art that Cameron painted depicting him as the Terminator hanging in his office. But he claimed that Cameron painted his face over Simpson’s, who was originally painted as the T-800. He even joked that if someone scraped away the paint depicting Schwarzenegger’s face, Simpson’s face would show up underneath it, which Cameron denied. Cameron told the Times, “There’s no O.J. under that painting. I gifted [Schwarzenegger] that painting after the film.” He laughed, “And I’m going to go over to his office and get it back now. I’m gonna go over there and go, ‘Arnold! I’m taking this painting back because you don’t appreciate it!’”