The Real Story Behind ‘American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez’

FX’s latest installment in Ryan Murphy‘s American Story franchise, American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez, is ready to hit TV screens. The 10-episode limited series follows the real life rise and fall of disgraced former New England Patriots player Aaron Hernandez.

The show, which stars Josh Andrés Rivera as Hernandez, is based on The Boston Globe and Wondery podcast Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez and Football Inc. The podcast dug into Hernandez’s life and career, along with his arrest, eventual conviction for murder and his death by suicide inside a Massachusetts maximum security prison.

In June 2013, authorities discovered the body of semi professional football player Odin Lloyd, who was dating the sister of Hernandez’s fiancee, Shayanna Jenkins, about a mile away from the then-football player’s home. Just nine days later, Hernandez was arrested on a murder charge in connection with Lloyd’s death at his North Attleborough, Mass., mansion and taken out of the home in handcuffs.

Hernandez was released by the Patriots within hours. He pleaded not guilty to the charges, but was eventually convicted of first-degree murder in 2015.

In May 2014, nearly a year after Hernandez was arrested on charges related to Lloyd’s murder, he was indicted on two counts of first-degree murder, along with other related charges, in connection with the 2012 fatal shootings of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado.

According to Associated Press, the pair were shot to death in their car at a red light in Boston’s South End neighborhood. The AP reported that prosecutors said Hernandez, who went on trial in February 2017, was angry because de Abreu accidentally bumped into him at a nightclub while dancing, spilling his drink. However, Hernandez’s lawyers said he was innocent. Hernandez was acquitted of murder in the killings of de Abreu and Furtado on April 14, 2017.

Just days after being acquitted in that case, on April 19, 2017, Hernandez was found hanging by a bed sheet in his cell at Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center, a maximum security prison in Leominster, Mass. He was later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. The Boston Globe reported that Hernandez and another inmate had been smoking K2 in the former football player’s cell. The newspaper described the drug as looking “like marijuana but it’s more toxic: plants sprayed with chemicals that can cause hallucinations and are hard to detect in drug tests.”

Hernandez, a former University of Florida football player, was drafted to the New England Patriots in 2010. The former tight end was reportedly someone to be warned about in the locker room. According to reporting from The Boston Globe, former NFL player Wes Welker warned former Patriots receiver Brandon Lloyd of Hernandez’s behavior.

“He is looking at me wide-eyed,’’ Lloyd recalled to the Gladiator podcast. “And he says, ‘I just want to warn you that [Hernandez] is going to talk about being bathed by his mother. He’s going to have his genitalia out in front of you while you’re sitting on your stool. He’s going to talk about gay sex. Just do your best to ignore it. Even walk away.’”

The podcast of which American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez is based upon, touches on several aspects of Hernandez’s life, including his childhood, and the reported abuse he and his brother suffered during said childhood, along with Hernandez’s reported struggle with his sexuality and how he exhibited symptoms of CTE.

The series will chart the rise and fall of the former New England Patriots tight end. Thematically, it will explore the disparate strands of his identity, his family, his career, his suicide and their legacy in sports and American culture.

American Sports Story expands Murphy’s five-series American Story anthology franchise, which also includes 12 seasons of flagship season American Horror Story, three seasons of American Crime Story, three seasons of American Horror Stories and the forthcoming spinoff American Love Story, which will chart the whirlwind courtship and marriage of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette. A potential fourth season of American Crime Story, titled Studio 54, is in development.

American Sports Story will re-examine a prominent event involving a sports figure through the prism of today’s world and will tell the story from multiple perspectives. This season’s script is from Stu Zicherman (The Americans), who exec produce alongside Murphy, Brad Falchuk, Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson, Alexis Martin Woodall, Wondery’s Hernan Lopez and Marshall Lewy, and The Boston Globe’s Linda Pizutti Henry and Ira Napoliello.

American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez premieres with two episodes on FX at 10 p.m. on Sept. 17. The show will also be streaming on Hulu.