‘American Sports Story’ Star Jaylen Barron on Why Shayanna Jenkins Stands by Aaron Hernandez When He’s Tried for Murder

[This story contains spoilers from the ninth episode of American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez, “What’s Left Behind.”]

“What’s Left Behind” is an apt title for the ninth episode of FX limited series American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez. With Odin Lloyd’s murder tackled in episode eight, Hernandez (played by Josh Rivera) clearly reached the point of no return. Waving off the police who show up to his home in the night to ask him questions as they investigate Lloyd’s (played by J. Alex Brinson) murder is a very temporary fix. By the episode’s end, Hernandez’s fiancée Shayanna “Shay” Jenkins, with whom he shared the home, is caught between her man and child’s father and her younger sister Shaneah Jenkins, who is literally grieving the loss of her partner, Odin, on the couch in that home.

Episode nine focuses squarely on Jenkins as her world begins to crumble after Hernandez is arrested for Lloyd’s murder at the top of the episode. Coordinating with the attorneys, taking care of a baby, dealing with financial woes after the Patriots dropped Hernandez and canceled his huge contract, dodging paparazzi and deciding whom she can trust are just a few of the pressures dogging Jenkins. Still the largest questions loom around the trial with the most obvious being: Will Jenkins side with her man or her sister?

“That is the biggest question, isn’t it?” responds Jaylen Barron, who portrays Jenkins throughout the series. It’s one, however, she is confident in answering. “With my beliefs, where I come from, and the way I was raised, when you get married, your husband comes before your family, right? And this situation is very touchy because they were engaged, but they [also] had a child, and there are so many different things going on,” she tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I don’t think there’s any right way to go here. She would have been talked about if she went this way, and she would have been talked about if she went that way. I don’t think there was a right choice that she could make. And I feel everybody forgets that she was only 22 years old. She was making decisions at the best of her capacity with the little life experience that she had.”

Barron’s Jenkins is pulled in so many directions in episode nine. From Hernandez’s mother Terri (Emmy winner Tammy Blanchard), strong-arming her to stand by Hernandez whom she, herself, has continually mistreated and disregarded despite him being her son; to Jenkins’ mother and sister naturally assuming she will stand with them, she’s all alone. While Hernandez’s loving aunt Tanya (Tony winner Lindsay Mendez) is a comfort, she’s dying of cancer and isn’t available. And, most importantly, she must think about their daughter Avielle’s future.

Her tie to Hernandez is a deep one. Because they both grew up in Bristol, Connecticut, they knew each other since they were kids and even dated in high school. Their relationship during Hernandez’s NFL career and shocking double life, however, is the main focus for the series. But Barron signed on to play Jenkins to widen the scope of her identity beyond just the woman who became Hernandez’s fiancée and the mother of their daughter.  

“I really wanted to expand on her loyalty and her love for him, so the audience could build more of an empathetic connection towards her. And I feel she was villainized during the time of the trial [in 2015], but I really wanted them to be able to understand why she did the things she did because it’s so easy to be like, ‘girl that couldn’t be me,’” says Barron whose series credits include Blindspotting, Free Rein and Shameless.

Even though Barron, whose mother is first generation Mexican American, and father is Black American from Tulsa, Oklahoma, grew up in the greater Los Angeles area, she views Jenkins as a kindred spirit, especially since she’s also another girl with humble beginnings. “I’m a really loving person and a really loyal person, and I’ve been in my share of relationships where I wasn’t getting that same respect or love back. And I felt within my own personal life, if I give more, they’ll see, and then they’ll get it when we all know that’s not the truth,” she says.

“The way the women in my family are set up, we are all very, very loyal,” she continues. “I just went with my own values and what I would do and the way I grew up, and that’s just how I expanded on [that point]. Now some choices I may not agree with, but I can come to an understanding on why somebody does the things that they do.”

Leaving Hernandez, Barron believes, was never a reasonable option for Jenkins, even as he faced murder charges for killing her potential brother-in-law Lloyd. “She has a child with him. She loves him. She built this whole life and this whole idea around him, and who knows what kind of trauma she has gone through in her life?” Barron explains. “We never know until we’re in that situation.”

Barron rejects any suggestions that fame or money motivated Jenkins’ relationship with Hernandez. “Obviously they’d known each other since high school, middle school, but she watched people come into his life and then leave, come into his life and then leave, and then, knowing his whole family dynamic, people wanted to take things from him, as [they] oftentimes [do] with people with a lot of money and success,” she laments. “But Shay, 100 percent, without a doubt, can always say she was there for him fully, and I feel that was what led her to stay by his side and choose him in this process.”

“I would never be able to abandon my best friend,” she continues, “and that’s the way I could relate to [her situation]. That is her best friend. That was her man for real. And leaving somebody [during their] time of need, I’m sure can be so heavy on your conscience that, when you go to sleep at night, you wouldn’t be able to sleep; you wouldn’t be able to do your daily tasks. I mean the guilt would overwhelm me as a person, and I feel like she didn’t want him to be alone. It’s that simple. She wanted to be there for him and let him know that he can’t give up.”

Although Barron is well aware that the series version of Jenkins and Hernandez’s relationship is an interpretation, she feels Jenkins was more aware of some things regarding her fiancé than some realize. “We don’t know the real conversations [Jenkins and Hernandez] had, and we obviously don’t know all the real arguments they had, but I fully believe Shay [saw] something in him that was off that nobody else did,” she says.

However, she wishes the series had explored the deep bond she believes they shared in greater detail. “He confided in her, I feel, in a way we didn’t really get to touch on in the show,” Barron explains. “And I think she couldn’t leave him alone because she knew what the outcome could be, which was what he did, unfortunately, to himself and to Odin. But I really think she did the best she could.”

All she wanted from Hernandez, Barron feels, is “the best for him, whether that meant he’s an NFL superstar or he works at Target,” adding that Jenkins “just wanted him to be healthy, happy and successful in whatever he did.”

With Josh Rivera, who stars as Aaron Hernandez, Barron found an effortless chemistry. “Josh and I never crossed paths before and, without the show, we probably would have never been friends or crossed paths, but he and I just clicked and got along,” she marvels.

“I felt proud of myself,” she says of playing Jenkins. Showrunner Stuart Zicherman, she beams, “does such a great job with incorporating our culture as Black women in the writing room even. He made sure that he had creative and beautiful, amazing Black women writing our lines.”

Capturing “the lingo between a Black mother and a Black daughter,” she says, was very important to him when it came to her role as Jenkins. That attention to detail, she continues, was important because “it’s a very specific culture that not a lot of people are aware of. I just felt really blessed to be a part of an experience that was inclusive and collaborative.”

“They got me,” she adds regarding Zicherman and his team. “I feel a lot of Shayanna, the way she talks doesn’t come unnatural to me because I wasn’t trying to be her; I was trying to represent who I thought she was.”

And who Barron thinks Jenkins is makes her smile. “I love, I love that girl, I do,” she gushes. “She has no idea who I am, but the way I view her and see her is almost ‘girl, I get you. I’m here with you.’ I’ve never had this experience [before], but when I was on that set and I was going through emotional turmoil, it affected my life when I would go home.”

She adds, “This role has changed my approach to acting in so many different ways. I had to tap into such a dark place for these emotions in Shayanna that I’ve never been to before and it taught me that I need to make sure I take care of myself when I leave the set… I just have a completely new respect for this craft.”

“I was a different person,” she continues. “I took on this energy that wasn’t always good, but it made me have a lot more respect for what I do.”

Hernandez’s infidelity was a heavy weight for Jenkins, Barron feels. And portraying that weight took an emotional toll on her as well. It wasn’t just cheating, but also the fear that her family — she, her man and their daughter — would be torn apart that haunted Jenkins, who wasn’t entirely wrong. The remarkable scene of Jenkins visiting Hernandez in prison with their toddler daughter to celebrate her birthday closes out episode nine. Jenkins takes their daughter, whom they call Avi, to visit her dad in prison for her birthday, but the guards confiscate the birthday cupcakes and hats. So she and Hernandez lead a pretend celebration with imaginary cupcakes as they all smile in their attempt to normalize Avi’s birthday celebration with her dad through prison glass. Jenkins stepping away to get water for Avi to allow Hernandez one-on-one daddy-daughter time is a very touching moment that shows how much he loved her. But the real takeaway should be how hard Jenkins works to keep her family intact even with Hernandez in prison.

Knowing Hernandez was sexually fluid would not have made Jenkins-Hernandez, who took his last name despite them never marrying before his apparent 2017 suicide in prison, love him any less.  “If she stood by him through murder, then sexuality is minuscule,” Barron says.

When the real Jenkins-Hernandez was asked that question in a rare interview with Good Morning America in 2020, she said: “I would not have loved him any differently. I would have understood. It’s not shameful and I don’t think anybody should be ashamed of who they are inside, regardless of who they love. I think it’s a beautiful thing, I just wish I was able to tell him that.”

Barron stresses that she has zero regrets about playing Jenkins and knows she left every bit of herself in every scene. “I would do it a million times again,” she says with no hesitation.

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American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez episode nine is now streaming on both FX and Hulu, with the finale airing on FX Nov.r 12 and streaming the next day on Hulu.