After his retirement from football, Simpson ventured fulltime into broadcasting and acting, working as a commentator for ABC's "Monday Night Football" and NBC's "NFL Live" pre-game show. In 1986 he joined the cast of HBO's football sitcom, "1st & Ten" as fictional former running back great T.D. Parker, a part he played for five years. Simpson returned to features with a supporting role as the accident-prone officer Nordberg in "The Naked Gun--From the Files of Police Squad!" (1988) and its two sequels.
In June 1994, Simpson was detained and questioned by the LAPD regarding the murder of his estranged wife Nicole and her friend Ron Goldman. This occurred five years after Simpson pleaded no-contest to beating his wife, serving 200 hours of community service and paying a nominal fine. On July 17, 1994 Simpson was arrested and charged with two counts of murder after leading the LAPD on televised car chase throughout Los Angeles. On the Monday following his arrest Simpson pleaded not guilty to both murders, and the subsequent murder trial received a staggering amount of international publicity from the news and mass media. After a brief deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of "not guilty" on October 3, 1995. Two years later, however, a civil jury found him liable for damages in the murders.