Sacha Baron Cohen’s controversial comedy series Who Is America? concluded on Sunday with an episode that saw the satirist attempt to elicit a murder confession from OJ Simpson.

However, a much-discussed segment in which a disguised Baron Cohen quizzed former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin failed to make it to air.

The series, shown on the Showtime network in the US and Channel 4 in the UK, has frequently been in the headlines during its seven-week run, with a number of high-profile politicians, including Dick Cheney, Bernie Sanders and disgraced Republican senate candidate Roy Moore, falling victim to Baron Cohen’s stunts. Georgia state lawmaker Jason Spencer resigned after yelling racial slurs and exposing himself during one segment, while another saw a prominent conservative speak in favour of a bill that would arm pre-schoolers in classrooms.

Simpson’s involvement in the series has been long-rumoured, with reports emerging earlier this year that suggested Baron Cohen had paid the former American football player $20,000 (£15,500) to appear on screen.

OJ Simpson in a still from final episode of Who Is America? Photograph: Showtime

In the segment, which Deadline claims was filmed using hidden cameras, Simpson sits down for an interview with Gio Monaldo, an Italian billionaire playboy and fashion photographer played by Baron Cohen in prosthetics and a ponytail.

Claiming to be working as a middleman for a fictional sheikh, Baron Cohen’s character says that his client would be willing to pay a seven-figure sum to Simpson if he confesses to the 1994 murder of Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her partner, Ronald Goldman. Monaldo fails to elicit a confession from Simpson, who says that he “didn’t ‘get away’ with nothing”.

Simpson was famously acquitted over the killings of Brown Simpson and Goldman in a criminal trial, but was later found liable for the pair’s deaths in a civil court trial and ordered to pay $33.5m to their families. The former Buffalo Bills player was released on parole in October last year after spending nine years in prison for his role in a 2007 armed robbery at a Las Vegas hotel.

The segment also sees Baron Cohen’s character joke with Simpson about murdering Monaldo’s girlfriend Christina by pushing her out of a helicopter or sabotaging a bungee jump.

A trailer for the final episode of Who Is America?, which features a clip from the encounter between Sacha Baron Cohen and OJ Simpson.

“Me and you, we got something in common. We both, how you say, ‘ladykillers,’” Baron Cohen’s character tells Simpson at one point, prompting Simpson to reply “No, I didn’t kill nobody,” while laughing.

While Baron Cohen’s encounter with Simpson did make the final cut of Who Is America?, the much-anticipated interview with Palin failed to materialise, despite the former Alaska governor having publicly admitted to being “duped” by the satirist.

“I join a long list of American public personalities who have fallen victim to the evil, exploitive, sick ‘humor’ of the British ‘comedian’ Sacha Baron Cohen,” Palin wrote in a Facebook post that claimed that Baron Cohen had posed as a disabled military veteran during the interview with her.

Showtime later said the claim was inaccurate, noting that Baron Cohen’s character, the far-right conspiracy theorist Billy Wayne Ruddick, had instead stated in Who Is America’s opening episode that he uses a mobility scooter “to conserve his energy.”