diary

Nicole Brown Simpson wore a long-sleeved cover-up by the beach, despite the warm weather. “We kept telling her, ‘C’mon, get in the water.’ She wouldn’t,” Denise Brown recalls of a Hawaiian vacation with her sister, Nicole, and the rest of her family, including her brother-in-law, O.J. Simpson. “We didn’t know it then, but he’d beaten the [hell] out of her the night before in the hotel room. We found out later, after she was killed, when we were reading her diaries.”

The incident is one of many chronicled in Brown’s new memoir, “For My Sister Nicole: Love Shouldn’t Hurt.” The book chronicles who Nicole was — from her happy SoCal childhood to meeting beloved celebrity and football star Simpson at the age of 18 (he was 30) to the physical and mental abuse she suffered over seven years of marriage. Brown also reveals the troubling incidents she witnessed behind the scenes, and pairs them with the knowledge she has now of what could have been done to help her sister.

(Blackstone Publishing, Inc.)

Nicole and her friend Ronald L. Goldman were murdered outside her Los Angeles home in Brentwood in June 1994. The brutal homicides set off a media frenzy, and overnight, Brown became the voice for her slain sister.

Images of an angry and sobbing Brown became the media’s hallmark of grief during the criminal trial, particularly when Simpson was acquitted in 1995. He was found guilty in a subsequent civil trial, yet still awarded custody of the divorced couple’s two children.

Now, 69, with sleek silver hair and a voice raspy from the many speaking engagements tied to her advocacy work, Brown has devoted her life to raising awareness about domestic violence. “It’s too late for Nicole,” says the former model who moved from her native Southern California to Florida decades ago. “I want this book to help others avoid what happened to her.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

We’re meeting today in downtown L.A., very close to the courtroom where the trial happened, and to the former LAPD headquarters Parker Center where Simpson was booked after Nicole’s death. Is it difficult being here? Should we have done this somewhere else?

No. This is where it all happened, so it’s OK for me to be here to talk about [the book]. It should start here. And I’m glad it’s with the L.A. Times because Nicole was here in Los Angeles, as was all the chaos. Everything started here.

Denise Brown.

(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)

It’s been 32 years since your sister’s murder, yet this is the first book you’ve written about what happened.

I had a [previous] book deal, but I wasn’t ready.

It was really hard going back because you think about all the things that should have been, that could have been, that she missed out on, especially with her kids. And everything was so public. It was so out in the open, with everybody looking at you. If you were too happy and laughing, it was, “Oh God, she doesn’t even know how to grieve.” If you’re crying, it’s, “My God, can’t she just get over it?”

I understand why people make these kinds of comments now, because if you’ve never been through something so horrific, you don’t know how to act. You don’t know how you’d respond.

Aside from raising awareness about domestic abuse issues, you haven’t spoken much about your sister’s life or murder until the 2024 Lifetime docuseries, “The Life & Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson.” It was the first production that included interviews and involvement from you and your sisters, which is stunning because there have been so many docs and dramas about the case.

I know. And without asking Nicole’s family, can you really make a good documentary?

A girlfriend of mine who is a producer wanted to [make a documentary] at the 10-year mark, and I just wasn’t ready. Then she asked me at the 20-year mark. I said, “No, this doesn’t feel right yet.” Then on the 30th, I asked my sisters [Tanya, Dominique and Wendy], “Do you guys want to do this?” And it was “Yes, let’s humanize Nicole. Let’s bring her back because she was lost in all of this.” Ron and Nicole were both lost. The trial has been done and saturated. Let’s humanize her, get videos of when we were kids. Stuff like that. So that’s what we did.

In the book you write that the docuseries provided new revelations about Simpson.

What I found out all these decades later shocked me. I learned after Simpson moved down to Florida with the kids, there were 17 calls to 911. There was an FBI raid. I don’t know what it was for, but the police came to the house 17 times?! I was friggin’ livid when I heard that. Where were the advocates? Where were the people protecting those children out there? They would have been protected by my mother and father, by all of us. Coming off that, I thought that it’s time to write a book.

We know so much more about recognizing the signs of domestic violence now than we did in the 1990s. The progress is of course welcome, but it also has to be hard applying that knowledge in hindsight to your sister’s case.

Back then I saw. I was privy to. I was there. I was involved. But I didn’t know it was domestic violence, and that’s what I want people to understand. Don’t read this book like it’s something that I knew about all along because I didn’t. I thought [the fights] were isolated incidents because they didn’t happen every single time I saw Nicole. They were years apart. I learned about domestic violence patterns after the murder.

Can you talk about what was in the diary you found in her home after she was gone?

A couple of months after her murder, my dad was reading her diaries, and I saw him lying on the bed, just broken. He said take a look at these, and it was Nicole’s writing and about the things that were happening. And I sat there like, “Oh my God. We were there.” We were there when this happened, like on a vacation in Hawaii. But we were not in the room with them.

Nicole wrote in her journal of that trip that once they were in their hotel room alone, he beat her and threatened to hang her off the balcony. But the diary wasn’t admissible in court. And maybe it wouldn’t have even made a difference given the lack of awareness about domestic abuse patterns.

Domestic violence, the jurors didn’t really understand it. They thought if you’re not dead after he’s finished strangling you, it’s not domestic violence. Jurors even said, “This is not a domestic violence trial. This is a murder trial.” Well, lo and behold, the ultimate form of domestic violence is murder.

Your passionate statement to a reporter during pretrial hearings marked the first time a member of your family publicly expressed doubt regarding Simpson’s innocence. From then on the press made a point of painting you as the furious, avenging sister.

Why wouldn’t I be angry? My sister was slaughtered, for God’s sake. I became the spokesperson for our family after I went upstairs to the press room [during the hearing] and said to a reporter: “If O.J. so innocent, why is he trying to suppress all the evidence?!” I couldn’t sit there and watch the so-called Dream Team [Simpson’s defense] constantly berating Nicole and belittling her and turning her into something that she wasn’t.

Before testifying in criminal court, you testified before Congress in 1994, urging lawmakers to fully fund programs and shelters supported by the Violence Against Women Act.

It was a bipartisan act from Orrin Hatch and Joe Biden, who were both senators at the time. Bill Clinton signed it into law after Nicole’s murder. I went to Washington and spoke before Congress because the funding was all [tied up ] in state appropriations. I was the first one to speak. I thought I was going to die. But it all worked out [laughs].

How did you deal with such an immense loss in private?

I ran every day for like an hour and a half until I collapsed because there was so much anger in me. My mom said, “Denise, I’m really worried about you because you’re just so angry,” and I said, “Why wouldn’t I be?!” She said, “I know, but you need to be able to deal with it.” So she invited our pastor over to the house who was a friend of the family. He said to me, “Denise, this is not God’s doing. This is the evil of man.” And as soon as he said that, there was something that just came off my shoulders. I could breathe again. You’re right. This is the evil of man. So I was the one who kept saying from the very beginning that I knew who did it: Simpson.

Nicole emerges as a whole person in this book, which after all these years feels long overdue.

Nicole was a wonderful person. Even when he gave her a Ferrari for her birthday, she didn’t give a s— if there was French fries in the gear shelf. Her kids, her friends, her people meant everything to her, and that was taken away from her by a f—ing monster. She was the best wife. All she wanted was her two kids, a white picket fence. The American family. So for her to put up with everything that she went through, it just breaks my heart because she was such a good person. Stubborn as all hell, but that’s OK. You don’t get murdered because you’re stubborn.

And people ask, “Why didn’t you just grab her by the hair and take her out [of that marriage]?” Well, because she was an 18-year-old girl who knew what she wanted, and she wanted him. She was totally in love with him, and she was not going to listen to her sister.

Your sister did eventually leave. She had been divorced for two years before she was killed. During that time, she wrote in her diaries that Simpson stalked her at the gas station, the supermarket, when she ate out, and your family witnessed it.

She did get away — for two years, and he couldn’t handle it. His ego could not handle it. His narcissistic behavior couldn’t handle it.

He was there for every move she made. She’s with a boyfriend having dinner, and he’s there, plopping his ass down at the table and having dinner with them. And at the supermarket?! C’mon, he doesn’t shop.

People [like him], they’re just so obsessed with control. And they’re narcissists. I don’t believe she could have ever gotten out of her situation because [of all the support he had]. He was so loved.

Why do you think she kept the abuse from you?

I asked [a family friend] why they think she hid the abuse. They said she was trying to protect her family and her friends, and to me that made all the sense in the world because that’s exactly what a victim does. The abuser will threaten the family. That’s their MO. I’m going to kill you. Your family. The dog. Our kids. Something you love will get hurt, and you’re the only one that knows about it. You’re the only one who knows how bad and how mean he can actually be.

Simpson died in 2024. What has that meant to you?

I don’t have to look over my shoulder. Actually, the funny thing is, I was never afraid. There was never a fear of running into him. But is there a relief that he’s gone? I didn’t even know he was sick, and I hope he suffered the way Nicole did. I wish it would have been longer. You can quote me on that.

Is there ever any closure for you?

You try to move on. You never forget. It’s always there. So to go back, it just ripped my heart out. In 32 years I’ve not told my sister I love her, like we did every single phone call, every single time we left each other. It was always, “I love you. I’ll see you later.” But it was never goodbye. We never said goodbye to each other because that’s so final. It was always, “I’ll see you later.”

What impact do you hope this book has on readers?

I just really want your readers to know, if it can happen to Nicole, it can happen to you. It can happen to anybody: rich, poor, Black, white, gay, Democrat or Republican.

At the end of the book, I say that I think Nicole was put on this earth to be the person that shines the light on domestic violence. The 24-hour national domestic violence hotline didn’t exist before Nicole. The Violence Against Women Act didn’t exist before Nicole. There weren’t a lot of shelters. There wasn’t a lot of education. There weren’t PSAs. She changed that.

There’s an alternate universe where Taylor Tomlinson is a young adult fantasy author holed up in a cabin miles from civilization.

“ I don’t know if you have some sort of backup career or backup life that you go to in your head when you’re overwhelmed or fed up with your career or whatever process you’re in,” she asks in the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel Denver ahead of a two-show night. “That was in the back of my head, [I was] like, ‘Well, I could just move to the woods and write books.’”

In this world, she’s a 32-year-old comedian with four Netflix stand-up specials and a two-season stint as the host of late-night game show “After Midnight.”

Her manager told her that people would probably be more interested in her memoir before a series centering on magic and dragons, so she started writing her own story two years ago.

A self-diagnosed workaholic, Tomlinson spent 10 years constantly moving. From a combination of mold exposure and severe burnout from filming “After Midnight” on weekdays and performing in different cities on weekends, she fell ill for months and was forced to take a break.

In that time, she wrote “Actually, Nevermind.” Coming out Tuesday, the autobiographical essay collection delves into the aspects of life that she changed her mind about since her mother died when she was 8 years old.

“Actually, Nevermind” opens with an eclectic mix of three quotes from “Anne of Green Gables” by Lucy Maud Montgomery, celebrated writer Joan Didion, and the 2001 Anne Hathaway-led comedy film “The Princess Diaries.” Tomlinson wanted a combination of funny and serious excerpts capturing grief, but also a quote about evolving as a person.

In the classic coming of age novel “Anne of Green Gables,” a young Anne Shirley states, “I’m not a bit changed — not really. I’m only just pruned down and branched out. The real me — back here — is just the same.”

That’s the essence of Tomlinson’s realizations in her book — she’s growing into herself but that girl who started performing stand-up shows on the church circuit at 16 is still in there.

Tomlinson has a bit from her first Netflix special “Quarter-Life Crisis” about your 20s being a period to “fish trash out of the lake before it freezes over.” She asks how I’m enjoying my 20s, to which I bluntly reply, “It’s a nightmare.”

“ My 20s were a nightmare, too, and I was waiting to be 30, and I was like, ‘When I turn 30, I’m going to be solidified and great.’ And then I turned 30, and it was like the last two years I have probably changed just as much, if not more, than I did in my 20s,” she says. “It’s been much rockier than I anticipated.”

In speaking with her friends, she realized they also felt a disconnect between the lives they envisioned for themselves and their realities. Tomlinson channeled that uncertainty into a jumping-off point for her book.

She reflected on when she began questioning the trajectory of her life and traced it back to her mother’s death.

“ I didn’t know if I was even going to write about my mom at all when I first got the book [deal] because I was like, ‘Well, I talked about it in ‘Look At You,’ and I’ve talked about it in interviews,’ but that’s the thing about losing a parent or any big traumatic grief event is you’re always getting hit by waves of it, and then you’re always untangling it,” she says.

In creating “Actually, Nevermind,” Tomlinson pored through her mother’s diary, deciding to include a few excerpts in the finished book. For most of Tomlinson’s life, she regarded her mother as a flawless, devout Christian whom she desperately yearned to impress.

Drawing on her mother’s diary, estrangement from her father and complex sibling bonds, Tomlinson confronts impossible standards, relinquishes parentified guilt and reframes what family means after loss.

(Sela Shiloni)

Her mother married young, so she tried to hit that milestone, too.

“I didn’t manage it and self-sabotaged a lot,” she says. “Now, I’m grateful that I didn’t get married young, but at the time it was all I wanted because I wanted to fit in and I wanted to be someone she would’ve liked, someone she had things in common with.”

Through reading her mother’s diary entries, Tomlinson began to heal from the impossible standards she set for herself to follow in her mother’s footsteps.

“ She was sort of this perfect, infallible character in my brain for so much of my childhood, so it was helpful to read about her being like, ‘I’m nervous about getting married. We got pregnant on accident,’” Tomlinson says. “There’s stuff I didn’t include about arguments she had with my dad in college. It was just very human, and it was very encouraging to go, ‘Oh, it wasn’t like this perfect frictionless decision for her.’ It’s not like she just nailed it and did everything perfectly.”

One of Tomlinson’s largest shifts in perspective was no longer feeling parental responsibility toward her three younger siblings.

“ I went from their sister to a weird half parent figure when I was still a kid,” she says. “And I made all these missteps because I was also a kid. And then young adulthood was confusing because I had been waiting for everyone to get old enough to be friends with me.”

Now, Tomlinson’s siblings all take care of each other in their own ways. She refers to them as her “soul mates” and feels guilty wishing for a romantic partner when she already has three lifelong best friends.

While Tomlinson remains close with some of her mother’s relatives, she has been estranged from her father for five years. She writes about the sadness of not speaking to someone you feel so alike, but she doesn’t go into extreme detail about cutting ties.

“ There’s some things you just want to keep for yourself, you know?” she says. “You don’t want every painful private detail about who you are and what’s happened to you available to Google because it just makes you feel like you’re a raw nerve walking around, and you can’t get it back once you’ve shared it.”

“And you want something to say on a fifth date,” she jokes.

After processing the heartache of losing another parent in a different way, Tomlinson allowed herself to miss the good memories with her father and assuage any longing for revenge.

In her essay “I’m Gay Now,” Tomlinson explores her bisexuality and the transition from chasing male validation to feeling comfortable in herself. She came out at around 28 years old. Part of what took her until then was feeling the need to prove that she deserved to identify as queer.

In essays on sexuality, faith and ambition, she trades the pursuit of perfection for hard-won self-acceptance, exposing a more vulnerable offstage self still learning to do her best.

(Sela Shiloni)

“ I think that’s just a theme throughout my entire life,” she says. “I felt like I needed to earn the label of comedian. I felt like I needed to earn the label of queer. I needed to earn love.”

Her brother helped her understand that she didn’t have to achieve the title — she’s always been gay.

With all of her adulthood realizations, Tomlinson also reflects on what she wishes she could tell her younger self.  Talking to a 16-year-old Taylor, she writes, “The most valuable thing about us cannot be all the things we haven’t done.”

“ So much of my childhood was like, ‘Don’t drink, don’t do drugs, don’t have sex. Don’t step out of line,’” she says. “I wanted to experience things more than I wanted to be this pure version of myself that was performing for the Lord.”

“Actually, Nevermind” is a reflection of Tomlinson when she puts down the microphone, and she is nervous for readers to see that side of her.

“ I feel pretty good about me on stage. Me in the room, I feel really insecure about,” she says. “I’ve gotten to a place where I feel pretty confident about taking up like 45 minutes to an hour and a half of your time. Eight hours, I think, is what the audiobook is. I’m like, ‘Eight hours is a lot more than that.’ So it’s been a real test of confidence.”

After years of chasing perfection, Tomlinson says she finds comfort in knowing that she may never be the world’s greatest anything.

“ In my 20s, I think I was always trying to be the best,” she says. “And now I’m like, ‘I’m going to do my best.’”