Aug 8
Watch: Teaser Drops for Ryan Murphy's 'American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez'
Kilian Melloy READ TIME: 2 MIN.
Prolific out producer Ryan Murphy will soon unleash a new series that delves into the case of New England Patriots player – and convicted murderer – Aaron Hernandez, who, it's speculated, killed to keep his sexuality a secret.
A new teaser has dropped for Murphy's ten-episode series, which "will cover the stunning rise and scandalous fall of the New England Patriots tight end," Entertainment Weekly detailed.
Hernandez played with the Patriots for three seasons, but his NFL career ended with his arrest and conviction for the 2013 murder in the death of a man named Odin Lloyd, who had been a player for a semi-pro New England Football League team called the Boston Bandits. Media reports indicated that Lloyd had been dating the sister of Hernandez's fiancee, Shayanna Jenkins.
That connection sparked an "outpouring of speculation that began to cohere around rumors that Lloyd had discovered secrets related to Hernandez's sexuality that he'd rather kill to silence than get out," EW related.
Hernandez was convicted of first-degree murder and given a life sentence. He was also charged with two other murders but was acquitted of those crimes in 2017.
On April 19 of that same year, Hernandez was found unresponsive in his prison cell and subsequently declared dead. His death, at age 27, was ruled a suicide.
An autopsy found evidence of a degenerative brain condition linked to head injuries that many football players have sustained in the course of playing the game.
"The case was covered in Netflix's 2020 docuseries 'Killer Inside,' directed by Geno McDermott," EW recalled, "but drama 'American Sports Story' will take a different approach.... utilizing an ensemble cast to recreate the pivotal moments in the case in question".
Adding fuel to the speculation about Hernandez's sexuality and whether a secret around it may have played a part in the killing were statements made by a man named Dennis SanSoucie, who claimed he and Hernandez had engaged in same-sex "sexual activity" when they were young, and said that the alleged intimate encounters "continued into high school" when they both played football on the same school team – a situation "we didn't want anyone to know" about, SanSoucie said, because he and Hernandez "prided ourselves on sports, and if anyone knew that we had gay sexual activity together our lives would be ruined."
"He was tired, depressed, struggling... what was he supposed to do?" SanSoucie added. His comments were part of an explosive documentary from Investigation Discovery.
"He wasn't gonna come clean. I mean, he couldn't," SanSoucie added of the NFL player supposedly being in the closet.
EW reported that the series casting, saying that "Josh Rivera ('West Side Story,' 'The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes') will star as Hernandez, with Patrick Schwarzenegger playing Tim Tebow, his Florida Gators teammate."
The new series is headed to FX, where it will premiere Sept. 17 before streaming on Hulu the following day. Check out the new teaser below.
Kilian Melloy serves as EDGE Media Network's Associate Arts Editor and Staff Contributor. His professional memberships include the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association, and the Boston Theater Critics Association's Elliot Norton Awards Committee.
