In the death episode of Odin Lloyd

(This story contains spoilers from the eighth episode of American Sports History: Aaron Hernandez“Odin.”)

Filming the murder of Odin Lloyd in episode eight of the FX series American Sports History: Aaron Hernandez was a particular challenge for Josh Rivera, who plays Aaron Hernandez, the former New England Patriots NFL star who was later convicted of Lloyd's murder and died of an apparent suicide in prison. The life of Lloyd, the boyfriend of Shaneah Jenkins, the sister of Hernandez's fiancée Shayana, was personally devastating for the actor. Not only had Hernandez and Lloyd spent time together a few times and were friends by most definitions, they were also potential in-laws.

“Your life being taken cleared up something completely different for me,” Rivera says of the re-enactment of the heinous murder. “When you talk about true crime, there's a barrier that we put up that separates us from reality, and filming that scene made me realize how serious that was.”

J. Alex Brinson, who plays Lloyd, worked hard to ensure that the gravity of Lloyd's death was felt harshly. “The main principle I held on to while building and developing this character and role was the fundamental human desire and need to lead and live a fulfilling life to reach one's full potential.”

Although Lloyd was born in Saint Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, he grew up largely in a rough area of ​​Dorchester, Boston. To show who Lloyd was, Brinson says, “I watched interviews with his sister and with (Shaneah) his mother and tried to incorporate those things into my portrayal of his movements.”

Like Hernandez, Lloyd played football, although not for the NFL. Instead, he played with the Boston Bandits in a semi-pro league and dreamed of one day playing in the NFL. So it's only natural that he looks up to Hernandez for making that dream come true. But the “Odin” episode doesn’t start with football. Before Lloyd arrives on screen, his Caribbean heritage is honored with a shot of food before a woman appears preparing a family meal. Since “Hey, Ma” is Lloyd’s first words, it’s clear from the start that he is loved and means something to someone.

Affirming Lloyd's humanity was paramount for director Steven Canals, best known for his films posewhich he conceived and later helped to develop American sports history Chief Ryan Murphy, especially as a man of color. “As you know, Aaron was half Latino, and the people he murdered were all men of color. And I think there's also this additional element when we think about race and class and how that impacts that,” Canals says.

Before working with American sports historyCanals had already listened to this gladiator Podcast, the source material for the series The Boston Globe and Wondery. He also read the 2018 book The Truth About Aaron: My Journey to Understanding My Brother by Jonathan Hernandez, better known as DJ Hernandez. In many ways posedealing with a wide range of topics, including HIV and death, Canals helped convey this clearly to Brinson and, in turn, the audience. “The conversations we had on set while we were producing (pose) was always trying to make sure the actors were comfortable because we were asking them to go to very scary, emotional places. In this way (pose) prepared myself for work American sports history Here, too, I had to have really important, really intensive conversations with the actors.

“From the beginning, from the first day we met, before we shot a single scene, I took him aside and said, 'What's really important to me is that you and I find a way, Odins to honor life.' I don't want this story, and certainly not this particular episode, to feel exploitative. I want to make sure we acknowledge that it was a real man, a real black man, who was murdered.”

“And so in every scene I shot with J. Alexander (sic), we always took a moment to step aside one on one just to have a quick conversation and I always paid attention to that “To talk to him (and ask): 'How are you feeling? How is your heart?' and create space for him to articulate how he feels. Because what we were asking him to do was really intense and really triggering and really scary in a lot of ways.”

The same was true for Rivera. “I remember conversations with Josh where he said, 'It's going to be really difficult to get to those moments where Aaron kills Odin.'”

Brinson, who is married to Lindsay Mendez, who plays Aaron's trustworthy older cousin Tanya Singleton, worked hard to ensure that his knowledge of Odin's fate as an actor would not interfere with the screen. Instead, he kept Odin's mindset that he and Aaron were friends, and so Brinson, as Odin in his thoughts, says, “This was the start of something great for me, and we wanted to build from the standpoint of family, from the standpoint of “To be brothers” in the laws, and then Aaron just went crazy. I felt like there was something wrong with him, but I didn't think he would take my life.” He has also pranked himself and believes it also helped him capture Odin's humanity, as he personally went through an emotionally dark time.

Emotions aside, the production challenges were great. “As a filmmaker, this was probably the most difficult day of filming I've ever had. It was really hard,” says Canals. “I think we shot this in February, like early February, in New Jersey. So it’s freezing cold and the episode is supposed to take place in the summer in Massachusetts.”

However, shooting in the freezing cold was not the main obstacle. “The night before we were supposed to film there was a huge rainstorm,” he says. “We get in and everything is just soup. It's muddy because it rained and we had to keep walking. There was a lot of work that needed to be done. We had to take about three hours of our filming time to create something the actors could walk on that wasn't made of mud so they wouldn't just fall into the ground.”

But then there were other challenges. “I think we probably shot it at eight or nine o'clock at night, but at that point the car got stuck in the mud. We had to call a tow truck three times to pull the car out because it kept getting stuck. The actors only had a limited number of costume changes, but there was mud everywhere, which obviously affected how I shot some of those moments. At a certain point it was like I just had to shoot from the waist up because her sneakers and the bottom of her pants were just completely muddy. So it was tough.”

Canals says both Brinson and Rivera, who have a genuine affection for one another, remained completely present through it all. “It was painful,” Brinson says. “Josh had to end life, and I had to want to live.”

For Canals, “Dirty Pain,” episode seven, was key to making “Odin,” episode eight, feel so real. And that starts with the script, he emphasizes. “They were really strong and did a great job of capturing and highlighting Aaron's paranoia. It is no coincidence that this paranoia intensifies at the height of his drug use, which becomes more frequent and more intense. It's a lot of Sherrod (Hernandez's one-time street friend and arguably former trailblazer, whom he shot at close range but later found out he hadn't killed). Sherrod makes threats (via text message). And there was just this confluence of a lot of different pressures piling up on Aaron at the same time, in addition to trying to be a good partner to Shayana and a father to his daughter. And he's still a huge NFL star, too. Now he's got this guy who says, “I'm going to expose you for who you really are.” And what does a person do when there's all this pressure? In the seventh episode, he mentally manages to escape to California because he has to have this operation, and in the end he finds that he spirals further and further.”

Fittingly, in the last shot of the seventh episode, Hernandez can be seen in front of his personal arsenal in a secret apartment that his fiancée knows nothing about, presumably prepared for battle.

“The truth is that Aaron never really speaks for himself because he is no longer alive. And so I really tried to get deeper into his psyche, but also to understand how the people who knew him best related to him, who the person they knew was. Because I think who we are behind closed doors will be different than who we portray forward and in public,” Canals says. “I understood him to be very complicated and someone who was tortured. But is that right? I don't know. I don't have the ability to talk to him, so I just tried to understand all the versions of Aaron that I knew existed.”

Episode eight really sets the stage for the series, not just the final two episodes. “This is the moment that changes everything,” says Canals. “And it's interesting because it's not like Aaron hasn't already committed crimes and done things. Aside from the fact that it was Odin's death that ultimately led to him being arrested and imprisoned, I think the difference between Odin's death and all the other crimes he had committed before was in that context, right? I think it was easier for Aaron and the audience to dismiss some of what happened because he didn't have such a deep connection.

“Because J. Alexander (sic) is such a phenomenal actor and such a beautiful human being, you fall in love with Odin,” Canals says. “It’s heartbreaking because you wonder, ‘Why? Why would (Aaron) do that?'”

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American Sports History: Aaron Hernandez releases new episodes on FX and Hulu on Tuesdays at 10 p.m.