Few stories lend themselves to sensationalism like that of Aaron Hernandez . He was a rising star, a football hero, and an all-time great. And he was a criminal, a murderer, and a cautionary tale.
How do you square away those extremes? How do you find, beneath all of those titles and designations, a human? That was the challenge facing Josh Rivera, the actor playing Hernandez in American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez , the new installment of Ryan Murphy ’s American Story series chronicling the jaw-dropping rise and fall of a young athlete. Hernandez’s story is a wild one. Even though we all lived through the headlines, reading the updates in disbelief, being reminded of the details in one single TV narrative is a destabilizing experience; you think, how did this happen ? He was a teenage phenom, one of the most promising high school football players in modern history, to the extent that the University of Florida recruited in the northeast for the first time just to snag him—convincing his family and school to let him graduate a year later to jumpstart his college career.
His on-the-field triumphs had him hailed as one of college football’s greatest tight ends. His off-the-field drug use and run-ins with the law caused skepticism about his future, to the extent that, despite his talent, he was merely a fourth round draft pick by the New England Patriots . While most players selected that late struggle to make a mark, he, alongside fellow tight end Rob Gronkowski, becam.
