Warning: This article contains mention of suicide.Based on the Gladiator podcast from The Boston Globe and Wondery, the first season of American Sports Story recounts the rise and fall of Aaron Hernandez. The football star was selected to play for the New England Patriots during the 2010 NFL Draft. He served as tight end for three seasons but was released from the team after being charged with the murder of Odin Lloyd. Hernandez died in his prison cell in 2017 by apparent suicide and was diagnosed with stage 3 CTE after his death.

The former NFL player had been engaged to childhood friend, Shayanna Jenkins, who is played by Jaylen Barron in the FX show. The actor shares that, while she never met the real person her character is based on, she wanted to do her justice. Through watching interviews, Barron understood Jenkins to be a strong, intelligent woman who was genuinely in love with Hernandez. She set out to embody that love in her performance and ensure viewers felt it through the screen.

Screen Rant interviews Barron about preparing for the complex role, Aaron and Shayanna’s relationship, and what genre she’d like to explore after American Sports Story.

Barron Believes Aaron Did Love Shayanna In His Own Way

“Despite whatever demons he was battling, his love for her never subsided, and it was never hidden.”

Screen Rant: With this being based on a true story, how much did you know about Aaron Hernandez before joining the show?

Jaylen Barron: When I first found out about it, I was 16 or 17, which was when the trial was going on. I dove deeper into it because of the Netflix documentary. That was one of the first things that was released about him besides the Gladiator podcast. The only thing I knew of him was that he was very handsome and that he had a mental illness. After I had watched the documentary, I was like, “That’s crazy.” I’m like, “Sorry, Shayanna, I could never do that. Could never be me.” And then literally fast-forward years later, and then here I am. I am her.

When I booked the role, I dove deeper and watched a whole bunch of interviews of his and hers, and I just tried to lurk on social media as much as I could to figure out more. Aaron was a mystery. He was even a mystery to Shayanna. The only thing that I really had to go off of was what the investigators of the show were giving me and his interviews and interviews of his teammates and what they were saying about him. More so reliable sources that I feel wouldn’t lie on his character.

Does playing a character who’s based on a real person influence your performance?

Jaylen Barron: Yeah, of course. She is a real person. Unfortunately, I don’t know her personally, but it absolutely influences a lot more because I want to make sure that I’m doing her justice, and I’m not making her seem any particular way. I really wanted her to come across the way I perceived her in her interviews as genuinely in love with him, strong, intelligent, and caring. And that’s the choices that I made as an actress with every single scene that I did. It was just embodying that love that she had for him and then projecting that outwardly.

They were said to have an early friendship, but the show doesn’t dive too much into Aaron and Shayanna’s backstory. Did you or the writers find anything that helped fill in those blanks?

Jaylen Barron: Her interviews, what they would talk about, even the court scenes of them talking about how long they’ve known each other, and how in love they were—it just gave high school sweetheart. And despite whatever demons he was battling, his love for her never subsided, and it was never hidden. He loved her, in his own way, but he still loved her and she loved him. I really tried to make sure that that did not get lost in the story. I didn’t want it to feel like she was just this woman who gets cheated on.

She does get cheated on, but he loves her, he trusts her, and she was the only one who was there for him. I was just really trying to imagine myself in her shoes with a man that I’ve known since I was 14 years old. I have his child, and we have this future that I want together, and I want my child to have a father. I don’t want her to be fatherless, so I’m going to do whatever it takes. If you have that mindset, then there’s not a length you won’t go in order to secure your child’s future. I don’t judge her for that.

Barron Wishes That Aaron Had Been Honest With His Fiancée

“Now we’ll never know if she would’ve taken it well or not. She could have helped him.”

Speaking from your character’s perspective, what do you feel drew her to Aaron romantically?

Jaylen Barron: I don’t know what conversations they were having in private, but just based on his personality, I feel like he’s very charismatic, and he’s charming, he’s sweet, and he is silly. I think that would draw any woman into a very handsome, successful man, especially because she’s known him since she was a teenager. Why not? In order for me to be able to figure out who Shay was in private, I just based it off of Aaron. If he’s a jokester, she has to get the jokes. So that means she has to be kind of silly too.

She obviously has a personality that none of us have ever seen before. And if you notice in Episode 5, when we’re at the mansion, she’s joking back with him. They’re eating some pizza. “Ooh, let’s get up out of here. People like me, Aaron, so get with it or get lost.” She wasn’t just this lame background character in his life. She had to match his fly, and that’s how I wanted her to be perceived. It was a strong woman who stood beside him, let him shine, but she still was her own person.

Do you think Aaron ever wanted to come to Shayanna with the truth about anything that was going on? Did she provide him with a sense of comfort?

Jaylen Barron: I feel like she gave him a sense of comfort, but I feel like his infidelities were just like any other man’s infidelities where they are sorry when they get caught. Do I think that he would come to her and be like, “I’m cheating on you”? No, because he’s just cheating to cheat.

He’s doing what millions of other men do. There’s no difference. Would he have came to her? Maybe, but probably not if it wasn’t a “getting caught” situation. But I think she made him feel comfortable because they’ve known each other forever, he was in love with her, and that was the mother of his child. As far as telling her, I don’t know.

She also found that bag of cash and a gun in their house during Episode 6.

Jaylen Barron: I don’t think that’s anything that he would’ve shared with her because he didn’t want to put her in harm’s way or risk losing her. She was a good girl. He knows that she would be like, “You need to tell the police, you need to do this, you need to do that.”

It’s so hard to say because there’s this narrative of who he is that everybody perceives versus what I truly believe versus what’s really the truth. I just hate the fact that he was keeping all those secrets from her. Now we’ll never know if she would’ve taken it well or not. She could have helped him.

Shayanna clearly knew something was going on with Aaron, but what do you think her worst fear was?

Jaylen Barron: I think her worst fear is losing him and losing their family dynamic. That’s something that she wanted really badly, and she doesn’t want anything to happen to him. Just like any man that you love, you don’t want him to go. You don’t want anything to crumble. I think that was her biggest fear—losing that family lifestyle that she had always dreamed of.

Shayanna Envisioned A “White Picket Fence” Life With Aaron

“I feel like she envisioned just mom, dad, the white picket fence, a cookie-cutter lifestyle, and all of this extra money didn’t really mean anything to her.”

There’s a moment when Shayanna is painting the walks, and Aaron tells her, “We can pay somebody to do it,” but she says, “No, I want to do it.” What is the life that she envisioned for herself and Aaron?

Jaylen Barron: A normal one. She didn’t come from millions and millions of dollars to where they could hire somebody to do it. She was used to being raised like, “I can do it. This is my baby’s room. I don’t need somebody else to do it.” All of that extra money is a little bit foreign to her, so she has a difficult time understanding where he’s coming from with it. And I feel like he has a difficult understanding of how to use it properly and not knowing that we don’t have to just pay somebody to do it.

We could just do it ourselves because it’s love. This is an activity we could do together. He’s just kind of missing that mark. I feel like she envisioned just mom, dad, the white picket fence, a cookie-cutter lifestyle, and all of this extra money didn’t really mean anything to her, but it was there. I don’t think she knew what to do with it. I don’t think she understood the gravity of what kind of lifestyle was going to happen for them if nothing had transpired.

There’s a really heartbreaking scene where Shayanna is expressing these struggles she’s having with her fiancé, and her mom tells her to be grateful. How did it feel for her to hear that?

Jaylen Barron: I think it was a story that many women might tell their daughters of how not a lot of people have this opportunity of millions of dollars, so you just sit there and be quiet. And like she said, be grateful for what’s happening to you. It’s an unfortunate circumstance, but in Shay’s situation and her mom, obviously, they didn’t know that something had to be done in that moment.

And if her mom would have given her the advice of, “You should really find out about this and not keep quiet,” then who knows what could have changed in the end? If she would’ve made it a point for Shay to go and figure something out about Aaron, this might’ve not happened, because she was aware and somebody was pushing her to figure out what was going on in his mind.

This is a limited series, so are there any other genres that you would like to explore? Any cool upcoming projects for you?

Jaylen Barron: Yes. There are some cool upcoming projects, but I do want to take on a role of a thriller, like a secret agent, Kill Bill type of woman. I feel like I’ve done the child’s horse wholesome family. I did the risky with Blindspotting, and here I am being the noble wife in this crazy drama. And next I want to be the baddie with a sword. I want to fight somebody. I want to do the most. I want to do backflips off of a balcony or something. I want to do it all. I never know what my dream role is next until it lands in front of me.

It’s not until I see it that I’m like, “This is it! I’ve been looking for this. This role was my dream role.” I had said after Blindspotting that I wanted to do something more serious, more grounded, a normal girl. And then it landed in front of me. We’ll see what’s going on next. I’m just waiting for my managers and my agents to send it on over, and I send in an audition tape, and they’re like, “This is it.” Whatever role I take next is my dream role.

About American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez

Produced by 20th Television

The first installment of FX’s American Sports Story is based on the podcast Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez and Football Inc. from The Boston Globe and Wondery. The 10-episode limited 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.

American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez airs on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET on FX.

American Sports Story is a TV show from Stu Zicherman and executive produced by Ryan Murphy. The series stars Josh Andrés Rivera as Aaron Hernandez and Patrick Schwarzenegger as Tim Tebow. The sports anthology series serves as the fourth installment in Murphy’s “American Story” franchise.

Cast

Josh Andrés Rivera , Patrick Schwarzenegger

Seasons

1

Directors

Paris Barclay , Carl Franklin