‘American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez’ showrunner Stuart Zicherman on Josh Andres Rivera: ‘This actor is extraordinary’
While writing “American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez,” showrunner Stuart Zicherman had one thought about casting an actor to play Aaron Hernandez, the late NFL tight end who was convicted of murder in 2015 and later died by suicide in prison. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh, man, we’re never going to find someone to play this,’” Zicherman tells Gold Derby.
But any apprehension about building a show around Hernandez, a preternaturally talented athlete and budding star who made several grave mistakes in his life, fell away when Zicherman saw Josh Andres Rivera.
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“In the audition process, we saw a lot of people performing the role and they could play the anger and they could play the darkness and they could play the murderous part of Aaron,” Zicherman says. “What we needed was somebody who could play the other side of it too. Someone who could play the funny, goofy Aaron — the sensitive and aspirational Aaron. Josh just has this incredibly unique part of him. He’s so likable, He’s so charming. And Aaron had that quality to him as well. People really liked him. So once we cast Josh, I could write more stuff that was complicated and nuanced because I knew he could do it.”
Based on the podcast “Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez and Football Inc.” from The Boston Globe and Wondery and executive produced by Zicherman, Nina Jacobson, and Ryan Murphy, among others, “American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez” is the first limited series under Murphy’s “American Sports Story” banner. But in keeping with Murphy’s previous “American Story” shows that have mixed tabloid headlines and salacious crimes with the American experience – think “American Crime Story” seasons focused on O.J. Simpson and Gianni Versace – “American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez” isn’t only about the former New England Patriots star. As developed by Zicherman, who wrote the pilot episode and co-wrote the series finale, “Aaron Hernandez” expands out to show how Hernandez was impacted throughout his life by everything from society’s embrace of toxic masculinity in young athletes to the barbaric violence inherent with playing football. But while it might be easy to imagine another show letting Hernandez off the hook for his crimes – he murdered Odin Lloyd, an acquaintance, in 2015, and was also charged and later acquitted in another double homicide – by placing the blame at the feet of the institutions that failed him and other athletes, “American Sports Story” takes a nuanced approach to the sport.
“It’s okay to indict the league for certain things, but it’s also our favorite sport. It’s my favorite sport,” Zicherman says, noting that he might spend 10 hours on Sundays during the NFL season watching football. “So I thought it was important to show that it’s a very, very dangerous sport. And even though the league has taken certain measures to combat CTE [a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head trauma] and the brain issues, CTE is only part of it. What we wanted to show is it’s not just about the game. It’s about the process. It’s about the institution. It’s about football in general, right? So we were interested in sort of indicting the system even more than just indicting the NFL.”
Zicherman took the same approach to Hernandez. As played by Rivera (an “extraordinary” actor, according to Zicherman), Hernandez does several horrible things and makes many unfortunate mistakes. But the show doesn’t ask the audience to root for its central figure so much as to understand him.
“We don’t want to make it likable, right? But we want to make him watchable,” Zicherman says. “To do that, you have to create a certain amount of empathy for him, if not sympathy, without forgiving him for what he’s done.”
Zicherman, who has worked on several high-profile shows before – including “The Americans,” “The Affair,” and “The Shrink Next Door” – says he hasn’t heard any feedback from the NFL or those depicted in the limited series (such as former Patriots coach Bill Belichick, played on the show by Norbert Leo Butz). But “prominent people in the sports world” have praised the show to Zicherman, he says, particularly the way he captured the era of the sport and the story of Hernandez with such honesty.
“People have been really kind about our portrayal of Aaron,” Zicherman says. “We just sort of illuminated elements of this story that people just didn’t know.”
All episodes of “American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez” are streaming on Hulu.
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