American Sports History: Aaron HernandezReleased on September 17th on FX and produced by Ryan Murphy, the film attempts to depict the true descent of Aaron Hernandez from NFL star to convicted murderer.

In 2013, ten months after Hernandez signed a $40 million contract with the New England Patriots, he was arrested and charged with the murder of Odin Lloyd, the boyfriend of his fiancée’s sister. He was convicted in 2015 and found dead in his prison cell two years later, having hanged himself with a bedsheet. He was 27.

Tragedy is an obvious theme for Murphy, who is known for his lurid dramas and documentary series about spectacular crimes, such as American crime history And Monsters: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. This latest FX series is a dramatization of a podcast, Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez and Football Inc.in which journalists from the Boston Globe documented his rise and fall. A separate Netflix documentary from 2020, The Killer Within: The Ghost of Aaron Hernandezalso investigated Hernandez’s life.

Murphy’s 10-part scripted series follows on from those earlier efforts, featuring Hernandez (played by Josh Rivera) as a troubled athlete whose relationships have faltered due to drug and alcohol abuse and who is driven by frustrations from a difficult family life and fear of revealing his true sexuality.

How American sports history portrays Aaron Hernandez’s sexuality

In the series, Hernandez has a fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins (Jaylen Barron), and a newborn daughter, but is an openly gay man. Flashbacks show him as a high school football player who masturbates to gay porn. gladiator Podcast revealed that Hernandez’s father, Dennis, was very homophobic and frequently used slurs for gay men. American sports history shows Hernandez’s guilt about his sexuality – at one point he shuts down during an NFL Draft interview while imagining his father repeatedly saying “faggot.”

In the series, Hernandez has fun with men in the bathroom stalls at the University of Florida – where he was considered the best tight end in US college football – and asks his evangelical teammate Tim Tebow (Patrick Schwarzenegger) for advice on how he can change.

Hernandez is later seen with Dennis Sansoucie (Kalama Epstein), who claims in real life that he had an on-off relationship with Hernandez. In the series, the two fly to Mexico for a romantic getaway while Shayanna stays behind in Boston.

Aaron Hernandez’s Brain

After Lloyd’s murder, there was speculation about whether Hernandez’s actions were the result of a traumatic brain injury. Boston University (BU) researchers who examined Hernandez’s brain after his death found a severe case of a traumatic brain injury known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). In fact, it was the worst case of CTE the BU researchers had seen in a young person. Hernandez had been playing tackle football since he was eight years old and suffered two documented concussions – one in high school and one while playing for the Patriots.

“It is impossible for me to look at the severity of the CTE in Mr. Hernandez’s brain and not think that it had a profound impact on his behavior,” says neurologist Sam Gandy, who looked at the brain scans on which gladiator Podcast. BU neurologist Bob Cantu points out, however, that while impulsivity is a hallmark of CTE, authorities said Lloyd’s murder was planned. Overall, of all the brains that BU researchers examined, “with the exception of Aaron’s brain, not one, to my knowledge, was linked to murder,” Cantu says in the gladiator Podcast. “They all have CTE. So I think I’ll just leave it at that.”

The podcast also suggests that Hernandez’s erratic behavior was related to drug use. The motive for Lloyd’s murder is not clear, but prosecutors say Hernandez disliked some men Lloyd was talking to and thought they were talking badly about him.

American sports history also makes clear what role Hernandez’s difficult childhood played in his violent personality. gladiator The podcast describes the daily physical abuse in his home in Bristol, Connecticut. His father was a star athlete in high school, nicknamed “The King,” but he was never able to fulfill his ambitions and instead worked as a janitor. In the series, he takes out his frustration on Aaron and his brother DJ, yelling at them and chasing them around the house.

The series also highlights Hernandez’s immaturity. He graduated high school early to play college football and left college early to play for the New England Patriots. In a prescient comment about Hernandez, Florida coach Urban Meyer (Tony Yazbeck) says “that kid is going to end up in the Hall of Fame – or in prison.”