Aaron Hernandez Actor on Filming Odin Lloyd's Murder: 'Extremely Tense'

Josh Rivera, the actor who portrays Aaron Hernandez in Ryan Murphy's new biopic series American sports historyreflects with Newsweek in the scene that was the most difficult for him to film.

The eighth episode of the hit FX series aired last week and focused on the former New England Patriots player's murder of his brother-in-law Odin Lloyd in June 2013.

It is believed that Lloyd knew Hernandez's deep, dark secret that he was attracted to men.

In an interview with Newsweek In the series premiere in September, Rivera said: “The Odin-Lloyd sequence was really, really difficult for me emotionally. It was a night shoot, so everyone was already very tired and it was just extremely tense and very sad.”

Rivera continued, “I think the reality of a victim and his family really dawned on me. I think we're constantly consuming things that are interesting when you talk about true crime documentaries or something like that, and there's this kind of barrier between reality that exists for some reason.”

“I think our brains do this to protect us. I think it's a psychological mechanism that we have a hard time grasping that this happened, and these are people that it happened to, and the reality of that really became clear to me during that scene.”

Once one of the most promising tight ends in the NFL, Hernandez formed one of the most dangerous tight end tandems in league history with Rob Gronkowski with the Patriots.

However, his football career came to an abrupt and shocking end in 2013 when he was arrested and charged with Lloyd's murder.

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 murder charges related to a 2012 case, but just days later he was found dead in his prison cell after committing suicide.

Hernandez was involved in the July 2012 murders of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado, who were shot in a drive-by shooting in Boston.

Hernandez was ultimately charged with the murders in 2014, but was acquitted in April 2017, just days before his death. Prosecutors argued that Hernandez shot the men after one of them accidentally spilled a drink on him at a nightclub.

Rivera also spoke Newsweek about how he believes the current prevalence of social media would have impacted Hernandez's crimes.

“I imagine he probably would have been suspended from college and professional games a little bit more,” Rivera said.

“Maybe if more people had been recording all the time, people would have been a lot less shocked and surprised by the whole thing. I think that was a big part of what made the story so complex, because it seemed like no one had a clue.” Such a thing was remotely possible, let alone likely. Judging by the character's impulsiveness, I don't know if that would have changed his actions much, but I think the public perception of it might have been a little different. “

The 10th and final episode of American Sports History: Aaron Hernandez airs November 12th at 10pm on FX and streams the next day on Hulu. The previous nine episodes are currently streaming on Hulu.

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, texting “988” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or going to 988lifeline.org.

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