Comedian and journalist Harmon Lee has revealed he worked as OJ Simpson's sidekick on Juiced, the disgraced football star's ill-fated 2006 hidden-camera prank show, a decade after Simpson's murder trial. Lee wrote about the experience as a new Hulu documentary, OJ Unseen: Exploitation of Evil, debuted on September 8, revisiting the project.
Juiced was a Punk'd-style prank show built around Simpson popping out from hiding spots and declaring, "You've been Juiced." It was made by the same production crew behind Bum Fights, Backyard Wrestling and the later show World's Wildest Bachelor Parties. Although briefly available on demand, Lee said the series never really saw the light of day after the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman learned of it.
Rebecca Halpern, director of OJ Unseen, approached Lee to take part in her documentary. He said he was initially skeptical, wondering if it was tied to a previous effort by Juiced's original team to relaunch the story.
A Redemption Pitch Lee Turned Down
Lee said that in 2023, Todd Lewis, the director of Juiced, and producer Rick Mahr contacted him about a sizzle reel they were putting together to pitch to Netflix, framed as a way to "clear the names" of the show's creators. Lewis wrote to him: "I was young, dumb and ashamed of it," adding that he had previously turned down chances to discuss the show publicly because "I never did it because I could not control the narrative. But now I can." Lee declined to take part, calling it a vanity project. He said Halpern later told him the producer of Juiced blamed a story he had written for getting the show shelved. Once Halpern confirmed her documentary was not a Juiced vanity project, Lee agreed to participate.
Lee explained he was already a journalist and comedian based in San Francisco when he took the sidekick job, and had written a book, The Harmon Chronicles, about going undercover in groups including the Church of Scientology and white supremacist organizations. He said an advert on Craigslist for the show prompted him to send in his reality TV reel, which included past stints posing as a competitive butter-eating champion on a dating show, a bounty hunter on the game show Whammy, and a felon wired to a polygraph on a program called Lie Detector.
The Bronco Joke and the Murder Ban
On the set of one gag, Simpson posed as a car salesman on a Las Vegas lot, steering prank victims toward a white Ford Bronco. "It's got great escape-ability," he said, adding, "It was good for me." Simpson had led police on a televised low-speed chase in the same model of vehicle in 1994 after failing to turn himself in over the killings of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. On set he also joked the Bronco "got me out of harm's way!" Simpson was acquitted of the murders in 1995. Lee said the show's director told him from the outset, "You know Harmon, we really can't mention the murders."
Inside the Gags
Lee described the show's format: something would happen, then Simpson would appear and "hilarity would ensue." In one bit he interviewed a prospective roommate, only for Simpson to walk in as the other roommate. In another he ran an open house, and Simpson turned up as a buyer. In a third, a man confronted a supposedly cheating girlfriend, only to find Simpson in her motel room.
During one prank, Lee kept calling Simpson "Danny Glover." Simpson eventually snapped, "I ALREADY TOLD YOU I'M NOT DANNY GLOVER!" In another scene, while being made up as an old white man for a bit, Simpson repeated, "The lights are on me. I'm feeling like a star," before telling a joke about Ron Goldman's father: "Who's the first Jewish guy to get a Heisman Trophy? Fred Goldman, because he's got mine!"
In another prank, Lee had to steal golf balls off a fairway while an angry golfer chased him with a raised club, but Simpson, watching, got so absorbed in his own game that he forgot to deliver his line. Afterward Simpson laughed, saying, "That guy was angry. He was like OJ on alcohol."
A Dark Turn in Las Vegas
The shoot wrapped in Las Vegas, the city where Simpson would later be arrested for armed robbery. Lee said that by this point Simpson was surrounded by a shady entourage and rarely sober. In one scene, dressed as an Elvis Presley-style motel clerk, an intoxicated Simpson broke character before a prank could begin, telling a couple, "Hey! I'm OJ! Hey! Do you recognize me?"
Lee also recalled ordinary people reacting with excitement after being pranked, including one man in a basketball tank top who shouted, "Oh, my God! This is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me!" before freestyle rapping for Simpson.
Backlash After the Show
Lee wrote about the production for Stuff Magazine, and later Vice, and said producers considered suing him over the coverage. After he appeared on The Howard Stern Show, he said the Juiced producer left him an angry voicemail complaining, "I'm not angry you were on The Howard Stern show, I'm angry because you were bad mouthing the product. You said the product wasn't funny!" Lee said the director then floated getting him and Simpson booked on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, though a friend who worked as a booker for the show told him there was no chance of that happening.
Lee also referenced Simpson's later, separate controversy over a planned book, If I Did It: Confessions of a Killer, in which he would have hypothetically described killing Brown Simpson and Goldman. The backlash led News Corp to cancel the book and fire publisher Judith Regan, and Fox scrapped a planned television special tied to it.
Looking Back
Reflecting nearly two decades later, Lee said he now sees Juiced as a product of toxic bro culture, made almost entirely by men around a figure who had repeatedly battered his ex-wife in a murder he called so brutal it left her nearly decapitated. He said the show's stated goal of rehabilitating Simpson's image was never really the point, since audiences only wanted to watch because he was OJ Simpson, an acquitted murderer. "I suppose somebody did get Juiced," Lee wrote. "It just happened to be the people making the show."
