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| Rick Mahr Now: Where Is the Creator of O.J. Simpson’s Juiced Today? |
Rick Mahr is back in the spotlight as Investigation Discovery’s four-part documentary OJ Unseen: Exploitation of Evil revisits the strange story behind Juiced, the unreleased prank series he created with O.J. Simpson. Nearly two decades after the project was pulled from circulation, Mahr has resurfaced to provide previously unseen behind-the-scenes material and explain why the bizarre television experiment was effectively left gathering dust.
The story began in 2003, when Mahr, then an executive producer at Xtreme DVD, pitched Simpson on the idea of a prank show inspired partly by Ashton Kutcher’s Punk’d. The concept was simple enough: put Simpson in unpredictable situations, let the cameras roll and see how far the chaos could go. The resulting show, Juiced, was filmed over roughly two weeks in Las Vegas in March 2004, with Simpson delivering the now-familiar catchphrase, “You’ve been Juiced!”
What happened next was considerably less smooth. Before the planned release, crew member Harmon Leon revealed details about the production, including behind-the-scenes images and an account of the filming. The leak reportedly created enough attention around the project to complicate its intended launch. Juiced did eventually appear briefly as a pay-per-view programme and on DVD, but Mahr later decided to remove it from circulation altogether.
That decision is particularly interesting because Mahr has since been fairly candid about his feelings towards the project. Speaking years later on This American Life, he explained that Juiced was never intended to rehabilitate Simpson's public image or turn him back into a conventional television star. The objective was much simpler, if rather more chaotic: make a reality show so outrageous that people could not ignore it.
Mahr admitted that there was a moment after production when he wondered what exactly they had created. That probably sounds like a fairly reasonable question after spending two weeks filming elaborate pranks with Simpson. Still, the decision to shelve the project gave Juiced an unusual second life. Instead of becoming another forgotten reality programme from the early 2000s, it turned into something closer to an entertainment industry curiosity.
Now, Mahr has become part of the story once again. For OJ Unseen: Exploitation of Evil, he licensed previously unseen footage and worked as a consulting producer, giving the documentary access to material connected to the making of Juiced. The footage provides another perspective on a production that has remained largely out of public view for years.
So, where is Rick Mahr now? He has continued working in entertainment rather than disappearing after Juiced. Mahr has built a career around producing programming, developing commercial partnerships and creating entertainment projects, with credits including World’s Wildest Bachelor Parties, XPW: Cold Day in Hell and Big Bet Poker. He is also the founder and CEO of Mahr Media, Fandom Media Group and Outlaw Media Group, continuing the entrepreneurial side of the career that began long before Juiced became his most curious calling card.
Mahr's career was not originally built around reality television, either. After graduating with a degree in Political Science and later earning an MBA focused on Marketing and Entrepreneurship, he worked in editorial cartooning before moving into sales and marketing. His time at Kraft Heinz between 1996 and 1999 came before his deeper involvement in entertainment production, giving him an unusually broad route into the business.
Over more than 25 years in entertainment, Mahr has worked across programming, production, brand partnerships and integrations, with his work receiving attention from major television networks and publications. His professional base remains Los Angeles, where he continues developing entertainment ventures. His private life, meanwhile, has largely stayed out of the spotlight, although he has spoken about being a proud father.
Fans' reactions to the renewed attention around Juiced vary considerably. Some are fascinated by the fact that such an unusual piece of reality-TV history existed at all, particularly because the programme disappeared after its brief release.
Others see the documentary's use of the footage as a chance to understand how the project was conceived rather than simply treating it as another piece of Simpson-related nostalgia. There is also a fair amount of disbelief surrounding the sheer oddness of the concept. After all, reality television in the early 2000s was already throwing increasingly strange ideas at audiences, and Juiced somehow still managed to stand out.
There is something almost accidentally funny about Mahr's account of the whole saga. The team set out to make a programme that would get everyone talking, succeeded in creating something people still discuss more than 20 years later, and then essentially put it in a drawer.
That is not exactly the conventional route to a television legacy, but it may have worked better than anyone expected. In an era where old footage routinely finds a second audience online, the decision to bury Juiced has arguably made it more intriguing than if it had simply aired, finished its run and vanished like countless other reality shows.
My take is that Mahr's story is arguably more interesting than Juiced itself. The fascinating part is not simply that someone convinced O.J. Simpson to front a prank programme; it is that an entire production was created during the peak of reality TV's anything-goes era, only for its own creator to eventually decide that enough was enough. Mahr's comments also make the project sound less like a carefully planned television comeback and more like an experiment that got increasingly difficult to control.
There is a certain irony in making something specifically designed to be impossible to ignore, then spending years trying to keep it out of circulation. That contradiction is probably why people remain curious about it today. The documentary finally gives the story some missing context, while Mahr's involvement makes him more than just the person who came up with the idea. He is also one of the few people who can explain why the whole thing happened in the first place.
For now, Rick Mahr remains active in entertainment and business in Los Angeles, while OJ Unseen: Exploitation of Evil has brought his strangest production back into the conversation. Whether viewers see Juiced as a forgotten reality-TV oddity, an ambitious experiment or simply one spectacularly strange idea from the 2000s, Mahr's story proves that some shows can become more fascinating after they disappear. What do you make of his decision to pull Juiced from circulation, and do you think the documentary finally explains why the project became such a curiosity? Share your thoughts.