One of the most significant controversies surrounding the original trilogy of Naked Gun films is the casting decision made by the Zucker brothers to hire O.J. Simpson for the role of Nordberg. While it was not unusual for the Zuckers to feature sports personalities in supporting roles—having previously cast athletes like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in a memorable part in Airplane—Simpson’s role was notably more prominent. With the new version of this iconic spoof film focusing on the idea that the characters are the descendants of the originals, the writers faced a unique challenge regarding this casting choice.
Director Akiva Schaffer, alongside writers Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, crafted the screenplay for the new movie. Recently, Gregor and Mand engaged in a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, where they candidly discussed their approach to this sensitive topic. When asked about their discussions surrounding the controversial casting, Mand provided insightful commentary, stating,
“The O.J. thing was one of the first questions Kiva, Dan and myself got when people heard we were doing Naked Gun: ‘What are you going to do about Nordberg and O.J.?’ It was one of the first joke areas we worked on in the movie, and we knew pretty quickly that we wanted it to be a fast reference [and] that we didn’t want to live in the idea of O.J. too long. Pretty quickly, we came into the idea of a Hall of Fathers because it also was attached to another question we got, which was like, ‘Is Liam playing Frank Drebin?’ We had a lot of alts of different O.J. jokes in the first couple of weeks, but then settled into this area.”
Moreover, the film retains several beloved elements from the franchise, including the tradition of featuring Weird Al Yankovic in a notable capacity. The writers expressed their desire to include fan-favorite aspects, such as the possibility of casting Priscilla Presley in the film. Gregor elaborated, “Weird Al, from the jump — there’s a couple things to us that feel like the fan-service demands that we have to give, in some way or another. It’s the same thing with having credit-sequence jokes and just some moment to hear that old wonderful theme song and see the police siren light. We did write at least a half dozen different places for him within the movie. There was one point where he was going to be the singer at Cane’s gala.”
“Priscilla, we talked about just because she’s an icon, and she’s still with us. We didn’t want to force it in. Luckily, she was game to do it, and that was really exciting for us,” Mand added, highlighting the collaborative spirit and enthusiasm behind the project.
