The Naked Gun makes references to all the stars that appeared in the original movie – including one that became controversial after the movie’s release.
According to director Akiva Schaffer, the remake kept the jokes about O.J. Simpson to just one quick reference to keep things “respectful.”
Akiva spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about how he handled references to the actor that played Detective Nordberg in the original three movies in the franchise.
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“When I first told friends, ‘Hey, I’m actually about to write a Naked Gun,’ they’d go, ‘What are you going to do about O.J?’ So, right away, I was like, ‘Oh, right. That’s the elephant in the room that has to be addressed,’” Akiva told The Hollywood Reporter.
Akiva wrote one O.J. joke into the movie and says he “never” wrote another one afterward.
In the movie, Liam Neeson and Paul Walter Hauser‘s characters pay tribute to the officers that have come before them by looking at their photos on the wall.
When the pair come across Detective Nordberg’s photo, the camera cuts to Moses Jones, who plays Nodberg Jr., who breaks the fourth wall with a look into the camera and shakes his head disapprovingly.
“But you want to be respectful of everything that revolves around him, so it’s not something I really took glee in. We just had to acknowledge it in a way we thought was not dancing on anybody’s misfortunes,” Akiva told the outlet of his decision to limit the movie to one joke about the former star.
If you missed it, Pamela Anderson was given some advice on the movie by one of the previous stars!