Orion Pictures Agreed To Finance The Terminator Under One Condition – SlashFilm

Cameron first envisioned Lance Henriksen playing the Terminator (in the final film, he plays LAPD Detective Hal Vukovich, and then the android Bishop in Cameron’s next movie, “Aliens”). The idea was that Henriksen looked like a normal man and could camouflage himself among humans — he’d certainly attract less attention than bodybuilder Schwarzenegger. Plus, as Producer Gale Anne Hurd told EW, she and Cameron thought using unknown actors would keep the budget down. Medavoy, though, actually wanted to shill out the cash to get big names attached.

Medavoy’s suggestion to Cameron and Herd was Schwarzenegger as Kyle Reese and Simpson as the Terminator. As he explained to EW: “At the time, O.J. Simpson had one of those commercials for Hertz where he jumped over a counter and ran to get a rental car. It was all of that athletic stuff, which I thought the Terminator should have.”

Hurd and Cameron were nonplussed by both of these suggestions. Cameron’s objection to Simpson was twofold. One, he thought a film about a menacing Black man chasing around a white woman would send a racist message (which, yeah, good call there). Second, he thought the part of the Terminator wouldn’t fit with the then-public perception of Simpson as “This likable, goofy, kind of innocent guy.”

“Mind you, this was before O.J. was actually a killer,” Cameron darkly joked. “We might have reconsidered after he had killed his wife.”*

*Simpson was infamously tried for the double murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in 1994-1995. He was pronounced not guilty but later found liable in a civil suit by the Goldman family.