With words once again failing him, Brian "Kato" Kaelin turned to his first love - acting - and gave the audition of his lifetime, playing O.J. Simpson as an irked ex-husband.
Speaking Monday in a soft voice which he said reflected Simpson's "upsetness" at Nicole Brown Simpson's refusal to let him see their daughter at a dance recital, Kaelin recited his lines:"Nicole didn't let me see Sydney. I want to see my daughter. Oh, boy."
"The degree of upset, it's such a hard thing," Kaelin said, struggling to explain his less-than-compelling performance. The defense had asked him to give a better idea of Simpson's demeanor than he had under a prosecutor's stern questioning.
Kaelin returns to the witness stand Tuesday for a fifth day of testimony. Next up is his friend, Rachel Ferrara, who is to corroborate the aspiring actor's recollections of hearing bumps outside his guest house on Simpson's estate the night of the murders.
Deputy District Attorney Marcia Clark put Kaelin on the stand last week to sketch out a critical time period between a hamburger run and a limousine pickup. That is when prosecutors claim Simpson murdered Nicole Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman outside her condominium two miles away from Simpson's estate.
But after eliciting what the prosecution needed, Clark turned on Kaelin, suggesting he was shading his answers to make his no-rent landlord look better - particularly when describing Simpson's demeanor the day of the murders and details of Simpson's rocky relationship with Nicole Simpson.
At one point Monday, in front of the jury, Clark even tried to have Kaelin designated a hostile witness. That legal maneuver would allow her to cross-examine her own witness, which legal analysts say Clark has basically been doing anyway.
Law professor Erwin Chem-er-in-sky of the University of Southern California said Clark may have been trying to send jurors a message that, since Kaelin is sympathetic to Simpson, they should put a lot of weight on any incriminating evidence he offers.
Judge Lance Ito did not announce a decision on the hostile- witness request. But UCLA law professor Peter Arenella said it was obvious he granted the request because Clark was allowed to ask more leading questions, and the defense stopped objecting to them.
Clark also apparently startled Kaelin, and the defense team, by suggesting that Simpson argued with his ex-wife by phone the morning of the murders.
"Isn't it true, Mr. Kaelin, that Mr. Simpson told you he'd had a conversation with Nicole on his cell phone while he was at the Riviera Country Club in which he had had an argument with her?" Clark asked.
"No," Kaelin replied.
Clark offered no evidence of such a conversation, and the defense objected to the question, setting off one of many long con-ferences at the judge's bench. Still, the seed was planted that more happened in the hours before the murders than a potentially tense meeting between Simpson and his ex-wife at the dance recital.
Kaelin acknowledged Simpson was "upset" when he returned home the evening of the recital for his daughter Sydney. But Kaelin had a difficult time explaining Simpson's demeanor - thus the acting display on the witness stand.
Clark also probed what Kaelin knew about Simpson failing to fulfill his obligations to pick up his children for some visits after he and Nicole Simpson were divorced. The questions so agitated Simpson that a deputy cautioned him to calm down.
Meanwhile, legal papers filed by a prosecution DNA lawyer indicated that the vitriol being exchanged by lawyers may be a precursor to an even nastier battle.
Deputy District Attorney Rockne Harmon threatened to launch a personal attack on a Nobel Prize-winning scientist if the defense calls him as a witness. He labeled as "irrelevant" the opinions of Dr. Kary Mullis.