*Although O.J. Simpson has yet to see one frame of FX’s “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story,” he has formed an opinion of the series based on reports he gets about the show – and it’s not a good one.
Jeffrey Felix, a now-retired guard who worked 20 years at the Lovelock Correctional Center where Simpson has been housed since his 2008 armed robbery conviction, told The Hollywood Reporter that Simpson has multiple issues with the series, beginning with the casting of Cuba Gooding, Jr.
“[O.J.] knows he is taller. He knows he is better looking. He has a bigger head. He is more muscular,” says Felix, who retired last September.
Felix hasn’t spoken directly to O.J. about the show, but says he still has numerous contacts within that facility who fill him in on the situation regularly.
“He is unhappy with the show because it is kind of making it seem like he is totally guilty,” Felix says. Some of the guards have begun to make fun of Simpson because of the series, he adds.
Another aspect of the series Simpson is not pleased with was him being depicted as failing a lie detector test following murderers of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman.
“He told me he passed that [test] years ago,” says Felix, who has a book coming out about his time with Simpson, Guarding the Juice.
While a guard at the prison, Felix says he was somewhat of a confidant to Simpson after he was asked by a former warden to keep an eye on the football and movie star out of fear he would be targeted by both inmates and fellow guards.
Whenever Simpson wanted to chat, the two would have their “Jew-Juice time,” a name Simpson came up with because Felix is Jewish, he says.
Lovelock does not get FX and DVDs are not allowed, so Simpson will not get to see the show until possibly next year when he is up for parole. Felix says the odds may be in Simpson’s favor as he is “model inmate.”
“He is trying to lay low in there,” Felix says. “He is doing a great job.”
