That OJ Simpson Terminator Rumor You Heard Is Completely False

No, O.J. Simpson was never actually considered to play the Terminator, despite what Arnold Schwarzenegger once said.

In 2019, the former California governor who did play the Terminator told The Independent that director James Cameron initially wanted the famous NFL running back and "Naked Gun" star to play the lead role. "it was actually O.J. Simpson that was the first-cast Terminator," Schwarzenegger said. "Somehow [James Cameron] felt that he was not as believable for a killing machine. So then they hired me. That's really what happened."

Apparently, that's not really what happened. Cameron himself told the Los Angeles Times that same year that Schwarzenegger's story was completely without merit. "O.J. Simpson was never in the mix at all," Cameron told the outlet. "That was rejected out of hand before it ever got any traction." According to Cameron, the co-founder of Orion Pictures Mike Edavoy — Orion being the studio that went on to distribute "The Terminator" — was the one behind this idea. Cameron said it was immediately shot down, retrospectively calling it Edavoy's pitch "the stupidest thing we'd ever heard in our lives."

Ultimately, the Terminator became one of Schwarzenegger's most iconic performances, if not the most iconic in the actor's entire career. Still, it's strangely comforting to know that there was never a timeline where Simpson played the character instead.

No matter what Arnold Schwarzenegger says, James Cameron maintains that he never felt that O.J. Simpson should star in "The Terminator," and in 2023, the Oscar-winning director reiterated this during an interview with Chris Wallace on the journalist's show "Who's Talking to Chris Wallace?" According to a report on the episode in Variety, Cameron said, "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."

Not only that, but Cameron says that Schwarzenegger's story about receiving a painting of the Terminator that originally featured Simpson is totally fake too. (Schwarzenegger apparently claimed that if you scratched at the artwork, you could see Simpson's face underneath his in that same interview with The Independent.) In his Los Angeles Times piece, Cameron said, "Let me correct that right now. Arnold is literally just wrong. I know it's hard to imagine! You don't argue with Arnold. 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." 

The reason any of these "Terminator" rumors are particularly relevant is that on April 11, O.J. Simpson's family took to social media to announce that the controversial public figure passed away on April 10. Simpson's cause of death has been reported as prostate cancer.

"On April 10th, our father, Orenthal James Simpson, succumbed to his battle with cancer," Simpson's family posted on X (formerly known as Twitter). He was surrounded by his children and grandchildren. During this time of transition, his family asks that you please respect their wishes for privacy and grace."

Simpson began his time in the public eye as an acclaimed running back in the NFL (notably playing for the Buffalo Bills and San Francisco 49ers at various points) and as an actor who appeared in the "Naked Gun" films, but there's no question that his trial was the main source of his fame. In the 1990s, Simpson was accused of murdering his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. Despite being acquitted of murder, Simpson was found liable for their deaths in a 1997 trial and was ordered to pay restitution to Brown and Goldman's families (which they never received in full), and he certainly didn't make himself look innocent when he penned a book in 2006 titled "If I Did It." Simpson was arrested in 2007 for stealing sports memorabilia he claimed was his from a Las Vegas casino and released from prison in 2017.