Jake Cannavale Says His American Sports Story Character Represents Aaron Hernandez’s Vulnerability and Fear (Exclusive)

After first recurring on Nurse Jackie and later appearing in The Mandalorian and The Offer, Jake Cannavale is breaking through with his latest role on FX’s latest anthology series, American Sports Story, a spinoff of American Crime Story from executive producer Ryan Murphy. 

Adapted from the podcast Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez and Football Inc. by showrunner and creator Stu Zicherman, the first installment depicts the rise and downfall of Aaron Hernandez, the late NFL player for the New England Patriots who was charged and convicted in the 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd. According to FX, American Sports Story “explores the disparate strands of [Hernandez’s] identity, his family, his career, his suicide and their legacy in sports and American culture.”

Cannavale — who also happens to be the son of Bobby Cannavale and grandson of director Sidney Lumet — plays Chris, an amalgamation of real-life men said to have had relationships with Hernandez (who is portrayed here by Josh Andrés Rivera). More specifically, Chris appears in various episodes as one of Hernandez’s high school football teammates who later has an affair with the athlete. 

While Hernandez’s sexuality has long been speculated in the media, with former teammates and various family members claiming after he died in 2017 that he was gay, the series doesn’t question it, depicting the player living a closeted (and often tormented) life. 

From Cannavale’s perspective, Chris “is the character that humanizes the gay element to Aaron,” the 29-year-old actor tells PEOPLE. “Aaron was a lot of things, most of which he did not admit to, and what the show does so beautifully is it humanizes all those different aspects, all of those different masks he wore.” 

He adds, “I think the whole point of Chris was to sort of show what’s underneath that fear,” noting that “besides Chris, the gay part of Aaron is really only demonstrated through the hyper-masculinity of the NFL, the homophobia of his father and his reputation within his community. So we don’t really get a sense of the softness, the vulnerability that comes with his closeted life until we meet Chris.” 

In fact, it’s in those scenes between Hernandez and Chris that the former gets to have tender, caring moments with this other man — even though they are sometimes cut short by his own internalized homophobia. Most notably, episode six (“Herald Street”) is when both characters are seen at their most intimate — a surprisingly tender moment in bed together — while the rest of it depicts a major turning point in Hernadez’s life, setting the course for his downfall.

“It was definitely something precious,” Cannavale says. 

When it comes to working with Rivera in particular, Cannavale says their scenes together were “simultaneously intense and effortless.” 

“Josh is one of the hardest working actors I’ve ever met, and that man still finds the time to let his personality come through. He keeps the scale of chemistry and performance pretty even,” he continues, saying that “we had an absolute blast on set.” 

The actor, who didn’t start shooting until after Rivera had already filmed five episodes “where he’s in pretty much every scene,” says that his costar “really raised the bar. I mean, he made me want to be better.” 

He adds that the 29-year-old West Side Story star had this mix of welcoming and confidence to him. “I knew that he was working hard, but he never seemed overwhelmed.” 

As for nailing that dynamic that’s seen between Chris and Hernandez, Cannavale says, “We both had this very real, not fear, but commitment to making sure that our chemistry looked [legitimate]. The last thing we wanted was for it to come across as insincere.” He adds that “my relationship with [Rivera] off camera definitely contributed to me doing the best acting job I could do once the cameras were rolling. So, I’m very much in a place of gratitude to him for that.” 

And at the end of the day, the role was an opportunity for Cannavale to push himself further in his acting career. Before American Sports Story, he played a drug addict on Nurse Jackie, appearing as his father’s on-screen son, Charlie Cruz, as well as a mobster and the right-hand man of Joe Colombo on The Offer, which chronicled the making of The Godfather movie, and a young bounty hunter opposite Pedro Pascal on The Mandalorian. 

“As an actor, I try to push myself and put myself into territories I haven’t been before,” Cannavale says, explaining that “sports is a world I knew nothing about. I had also never played a gay man before. Not only that, but specifically, I’d also never really played a character that had such a sense of yearning that I was really drawn to.”

He also wasn’t familiar with Hernandez’s story until signing onto the project. “I had never heard his name. I knew nothing,” the actor admits, before revealing that he went on to watch a documentary about the case. “It was absolutely riveting and heartbreaking and confounding. It definitely made me think when I wasn’t crying.” 

While American Sports Story was “another very exciting, unprecedented project” for Cannavale, it likely won’t be his last. He’s slated to make his next on-screen appearance in Prime Video’s series adaptation of author Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta books, starring Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis. He’s also open to doing more with Murphy, or “Mr. Murphy,” as he calls him. 

Although the two didn’t meet on the set of the FX series, Cannavale says that “Mr. Murphy is a towering figure in television.” And after having “an absolute blast on American Sports Story,” he says he “1000% would say yes to another project” from Murphy’s world “because everybody on that crew was an absolute superhero.” He adds that the mega-producer “runs a tight ship, but you know, it sails.” 

And considering that his father starred in the hit Netflix true-crime series, The Watcher, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see more of Cannavale in one of Murphy’s many projects in the future.

American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on FX, and is available to stream the next day on Hulu.