Portraying the role of a real life person can be difficult and delicate, as Cuba Gooding Jr. shared in a recent interview.
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While attending the Motion Picture and Television Fund Thursday in Los Angeles, which took place two days after the series concluded, he opened up about how he feels now that the show has wrapped up.
“Relieved,” he told reporters. “[I’m] working on the fact that I’m trying to just process that mentality from my frame of mind.”
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“I was in a dark place with it,” Gooding Jr. reveals, explaining that the response he received from people he didn’t know was “overwhelming.”
“I went to church one Sunday and the pastor asked for [me] to stay after the service. Him and his wife prayed over me because he felt there was a darkness in my spirit,” he recalls. “It was things like that where I’m like, ‘Man, this show is really affecting people.’”
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Gooding Jr. says he attempted to portray the former football star as honestly as he could.
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Cuba Gooding Jr. is ‘Relieved’ 'American Crime Story: People v. O.J. Simpson' is Over: ‘I Was in a Dark Place with It’
“[I’m] working on the fact that I’m trying to just process that mentality from my frame of mind,” says the actor.