For Stu Zicherman, the biggest challenge when setting out to make American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez was figuring out how to make their lead character “relatable, watchable, empathetic — and then trying to string that through the entire season,” she showrunner tells The Hollywood Reporter.

“That was always the focus in the writers room,” he says. “It’s like, ‘How can we be true to the story, be true to all the other characters [but] also find ways to Aaron’s humanity that feel like it’s cascading out of control?”

Now that the true-crime series from Ryan Muprhy has released its finale, Zicherman is able to offer his assessment of the 10-episode FX limited series. And he says that giving people reason to keep watching was key.

“Once you get into the later part of the season with the murders and some of the awful, awful things he did, [the question becomes] ‘how can…