Naked Gun Director Limited Reboot to Only 1 O.J. Simpson Joke to Be ‘Respectful’: ‘The Elephant in the Room’

The Naked Gun is making a comedic reference to all of its previous stars, including controversial athlete O.J. Simpson

Director Akiva Schaffer confessed to The Hollywood Reporter that when people learned he was taking on the newest iteration of the spoof franchise, he was immediately asked about what he would do about Simpson’s Naked Gun character, Detective Nordberg. The late athlete starred in the 1988 original, plus the sequels in 1991 and 1994.

“When I first told friends, ‘Hey, I’m actually about to write a Naked Gun,’ they’d go, ‘What are you going to do about O.J?’ So, right away, I was like, ‘Oh, right. That’s the elephant in the room that has to be addressed,’ ” he recalled for the outlet. But he confessed they only needed one joke to address audience questions. 

Schaffer, 47, admitted that after writing the initial joke acknowledging Simpson’s character, he and the writers “never wrote another O.J. joke.” 

The sole Simpson joke appears in the film’s trailer, as stars Liam Neeson Frank Drebin Jr. and Paul Walter Hauser pay tribute to framed photos of their late parents in a police Hall of Legends. It then transitions to a framed portrait of Nordberg (Simpson), before cutting to his son Nordberg Jr. (Moses Jones) breaking the fourth wall and shaking his head in appallment.

“We just went, ‘Yep, that takes care of that,’ ” Schaffer said. “I didn’t know that the joke would kill as hard as it did at our first test screening. If I had known that, then maybe I would’ve written other jokes,” he continued.

“But you want to be respectful of everything that revolves around him, so it’s not something I really took glee in. We just had to acknowledge it in a way we thought was not dancing on anybody’s misfortunes,” he said, seemingly referencing Simpson’s infamous 1995 murder trial for the homicides of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ron Goldman.

He also explained that he and the team “didn’t get pushback or anything.” 

“On the edgy jokes, people would go, ‘Ooh, I don’t know.’ And I’d be like, ‘Don’t worry. The movie is going to be 85 minutes. A fourth of the script is getting cut. Anything that doesn’t work is going to be cut,’ ” he explained. “So that’s the way I made everyone relax all the time.” (The film was intended to be 85 minutes long to mirror the original two films’ runtimes, but is ultimately 83 minutes.)

The movie, produced by Seth MacFarlane, is based on the Jim Abrahams and David Zucker and Jerry Zucker franchiseThe Naked Gun, which originally starred Leslie Nielsen as self-serious detective Frank Drebin, who managed to rise through the ranks of the police squad.

In the new film, Neeson stars as Lt. Frank Drebin Jr., son of Nielsen’s character, as he follows in his father’s footsteps. The cast includes Hauser, Pamela Anderson, CCH Pounder, Kevin Durand, Cody Rhodes, Liza Koshy, Eddie Yu and Danny Huston.

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The Naked Gun premiered in theaters on Friday, Aug. 1.