The first look at Ryan Murphy's drama American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez is here.
The official teaser trailer for the 10-episode limited FX series dropped Thursday, showing actor Josh Andrés Rivera, who portrays the late Hernandez in the show, wearing his New England Patriots jersey and catching a football while handcuffed.
The series "charts the rise and fall of NFL superstar Aaron Hernandez and explores the disparate strands of his identity, his family, his career, his suicide, and their legacy in sports and American culture," its synopsis reads.
Murphy is the series' executive producer, along with Hernan Lopez and Marshall Lewy of Wondery, as well as Linda Pizzuti Henry and Ira Napoliello of The Boston Globe.
The first two episodes of American Sports Story premiere on September 17 on FX and streaming on Hulu.
Hernandez was one of the most promising tight ends, forming one of the most dangerous tight end tandems in NFL history with Rob Gronkowski. He helped the Patriots earn a spot in Super Bowl XLVI, although they ultimately lost to the New York Giants.
But Hernandez's football career came to an abrupt and shocking end in 2013 when he was arrested and charged with the murder of his former friend Odin Lloyd, who may have known Hernandez's deep dark secret that he was attracted to men.
Following his arrest, the Patriots released Hernandez from the team.
In 2015, Hernandez was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Two years later, Hernandez was acquitted of double homicide charges related to a 2012 case, but just days later, he was found dead in his prison cell, having died by suicide.
Hernandez was implicated in the July 2012 murders of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado, who were shot and killed in a drive-by shooting in Boston. Hernandez was eventually charged with the murders in 2014, but he was acquitted in April 2017, just days before his death. The prosecution argued that Hernandez had shot the men after one of them accidentally spilled a drink on him at a nightclub.
After his death, it was revealed that Hernandez had been suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a brain disease linked to repeated head trauma, which some speculate may have influenced his behavior.
His fall from grace was previously covered in the 2020 Netflix docuseries Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez, directed by Geno McDermott. Hernandez's friends, as well as fellow football players and insiders, participated in the series which aimed to examine how he went from an NFL star to a convicted killer.
After the release of Killer Inside, Hernandez's brother, Jonathan, told Dr. Oz that the family feared he had become a murderer to hide his secret sex life. Jonathan claimed Aaron had tearfully admitted to their mother that he was attracted to men before his prison suicide.
"He's like, 'Mom, you're going die never knowing your son,'" Jonathan told Oz.
Hernandez allegedly had a longtime male lover, a friend from high school, and left behind a suicide note addressed to a gay jailhouse lover. He allegedly left two other notes: to his fiancée and his 4-year-old daughter.
The two-part Aaron Hernandez Uncovered, which aired on the Oxygen network in March 2018, presented a number of people close to the former NFL star who revealed Hernandez was a gay man.
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