In the year when John Travolta was last on TV, McDonalds invented the Happy Meal and Sony brought out the Walkman – but now he’s set to return to the small screen for the first time since 1979.
Travolta will play Robert Shapiro in a 10-part miniseries dramatising the OJ Simpson trial, to screen on US network FX. Shapiro was Simpson’s defence attorney, and the series is set to follow the case through the eyes of the legal teams. Sarah Paulson, best known for her role in American Horror Story, will play Shapiro’s opposite number, prosecutor Marcia Clark.
Also in the cast of the series, entitled American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson are Cuba Gooding Jr, playing Simpson, and David Schwimmer as Simpson’s friend and lawyer Robert Kardashian (also father to reality TV mainstays Kim, Kourtney et al).
The televised trial gripped the US, with Simpson, a football and movie star, in the dock for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, who was on an errand at her flat. The case was full of dramatic incident, from the car chase through Los Angeles to arrest Simpson, to the claim that “if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit” from the defence regarding a leather glove found at the crime scene.
Travolta’s career began on TV, in the sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, about a teacher who returns to his alma mater to take on a class of rowdy – but, this being a US sitcom, inevitably loveable – remedial students. Travolta played Vinnie Barbarino, a wisecracking Italian-American heartthrob, thus cementing his on-screen type for the next decade.
During the four seasons of the show, Travolta also starred in his breakthrough film roles in Grease, Saturday Night Fever, and Carrie, taking a reduced role in the final season as his star ascended.
