It may sounds strange, but I've found myself 'shipping two characters in a docu-series about something that happened over 20 years ago, even though I already know they don't actually get together. I just can't help it, the relationship portrayed between Marcia Clark and Chris Darden on American Crime Story is so sweet, and I want them to be happy. While providing emotional and legal support to each other in their case against O.J. Simpson on the FX series, Clark and Darden have grown increasingly close. But did that last beyond the length of the trial itself? Do Marcia Clark and Chris Darden still talk?
Darden and Clark seemed to take different paths after the case, with Darden opening his own practice as a defense attorney, according to his LinkedIn profile, and Clark becoming a successful crime fiction writer. Clark told Entertainment Tonight in the interview below that they did catch up occasionally, saying, "We ran into each other at times, and got to talk and reminisce, if you will." However it seems those correspondences have not happened in a while, as she also said, "we've gone separate ways, and we haven't spoken in quite some time now."
The show's portrayal of quick glances and heads-resting-on-shoulders seem to indicate that Darden and Clark were in the process of forming a lasting bond. The two even "sat up listening to hip-hop and R&B," Darden wrote in his memoir In Contempt, according to Entertainment Tonight. "We danced a few times and drank a few bottles of wine. In my mind, that is a relationship," he wrote.
Meanwhile, Clark told Entertainment Tonight of their work together, "Chris and I were trench mates," and doesn't describe it as a "relationship" the way Darden did in his book. And back in 1995, when there were rumors that a romance between the two would lead to marriage after the trial concluded, the New York Post quoted Clark as saying, "No, that's completely false. God knows where that one got started," as reported by the Chicago Tribune.
Though they have not spoken in "quite some time," American Crime Story is putting Clark and Darden back in the spotlight. A recent episode of American Crime Story went so far as to show Chris Darden calling into a misogynist shock jock holding a terrible poll about whether Marcia Clark is a "b*tch or a babe?" to which Darden gleefully votes "babe." While these two may not have been more than close co-workers in real life and are currently nothing more than two people who once worked together, the series has viewers questioning their partnership all over again.
Image: Ray Mickshaw/FX
