Marcia Clark

In 2019, Clark appeared in the eighteenth season finale of Gordon Ramsay’s reality series Hell’s Kitchen as a VIP guest diner for winner and season six veteran Ariel Contreras-Fox.

In contrast, Clark’s “Samantha Brinkman” series features a woman who is a defense attorney. It includes Blood Defense (2016), Moral Defense (2016), and Snap Judgment (2017), and is being adapted into a TV series for NBC, co-written by Clark. Clark never expected to be an author, but said, “As a lawyer, I came to understand early that storytelling plays a very important part when you address a jury. So I guess my instincts have always kind of been there when it comes to weaving a narrative.” She read Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys mystery fiction as a child, and said “I have been addicted to crime since I was born. I was making up crime stories when I was a 4- or 5-year-old kid.”

Clark appears in the 2016 documentary miniseries O.J.: Made in America. She is played by Sarah Paulson in the 2016 television series The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story, which focuses on the O. J. Simpson trial. Paulson’s performance as Clark earned wide acclaim, and she earned a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award for the role. Clark attended the Emmy Awards with Paulson on September 18, 2016. Katey Rich wrote in Vanity Fair that the series positions Clark as a “feminist hero.”

In 2015, Clark was parodied on the sitcom Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt in the form of the character “Marcia,” portrayed by Tina Fey. Fey was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for the role.

Since the Simpson trial, Clark has made numerous appearances on television, including being a “special correspondent” for Entertainment Tonight. She provided coverage of high-profile trials and reported from the red carpet at awards shows such as the Emmy Awards. She was a guest attorney on the short-lived television series Power of Attorney, and was also featured on Headline News (HLN), where she analyzed the Casey Anthony trial. In July 2013, Clark provided commentary for CNN on the trial of George Zimmerman in Florida for the murder of Trayvon Martin.

In August 2013, Clark appeared as Attorney Sidney Barnes in the Pretty Little Liars episode, “Now You See Me, Now You Don’t.”

Clark has written several novels. Her “Rachel Knight” series centers on a prosecutor in the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office, and includes Guilt By Association (2011), Guilt By Degrees (2012), Killer Ambition (2013), and The Competition (2014). Guilt by Association was adapted as a television pilot for TNT in 2014.

Clark is best remembered as the lead prosecutor in the 1995 trial of O. J. Simpson on charges of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson, his ex-wife, and Ron Goldman. Prior to this trial, Clark’s highest-profile prosecution was in 1991, when she prosecuted Robert John Bardo for the murder of television star Rebecca Schaeffer. Clark said that the media attention she received during the trial was “the hell of the trial,” calling herself “famous in a way that was kind of terrifying”. Clark was advised by a jury consultant to “talk softer, dress softer, wear pastels” as a means to improve her image. She subsequently changed her hairstyle into a perm, and the Los Angeles Times described her as looking like “Sigourney Weaver, only more professional.” The New York Times commented that “the transformation was not entirely seamless.”

In 1980, Clark married her second husband, Gordon Clark, a computer programmer and systems administrator who was employed at the Church of Scientology. They got divorced in 1995 and have two sons, born circa 1990 and 1992. Gordon argued at a custody hearing during the Simpson trial that he should receive full custody of their children due to the long hours Marcia spent working for the trial.

Clark no longer considers herself a religious person, although she was raised Jewish and her first wedding was a conservative Jewish ceremony. She was a member of the Church of Scientology but since 1980 is no longer associated with it.

Clark was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1979. She was in private practice and worked as a public defender for the city of Los Angeles before she made a complete turnaround and became a prosecutor in 1981. She worked as a deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County, California, and was mentored by prosecutor Harvey Giss.

Kleks graduated from Susan E. Wagner High School, a public school in the Manor Heights section of Staten Island, New York City, New York. She studied at the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating in 1976 with a degree in political science, then earned a Juris Doctor degree at Southwestern University School of Law.

In 1976, Clark married Gabriel Horowitz, an Israeli professional backgammon player whom she met while they were students at UCLA. They received a “Tijuana divorce” in 1980, and had no children. Horowitz was briefly in the news after he (or his mother) sold topless photos of Clark to the National Enquirer during the O. J. Simpson trial.

Marcia Rachel Clark (née Kleks, formerly Horowitz; August 31, 1953) is an American prosecutor, author, television correspondent and television producer. She is known for being the lead prosecutor in the O. J. Simpson murder case.