Josh Rivera Tackles a New Kind of Role

For fans of Josh Rivera, be it from his musical theater days in “West Side Story,” his role as the moral, sound Sejanus in the latest “Hunger Games” or his much-beloved relationship with actress Rachel Zegler, the actor is about to show a whole new side of himself.

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The 29-year-old, who is easy-going, charming and light in person, takes on the role of Aaron Hernandez, the New England Patriots tight end who was convicted of murder in 2013 and took his own life in 2017 while in prison, in the FX series “American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez.” The transformation is unlike anything he’s ever done before.

“I like to be lighthearted, and I like to make a lot of jokes. I consider myself a good-humored person, but there’s a degree of sensitivity I obviously have to approach this with that I might not with other projects,” Rivera says. “With ‘The Hunger Games,’ there’s a little bit of levity there, even considering the subject matter, and ‘West Side Story’ was more of a celebration, whereas this is an analytical lens of the relationships or lack thereof, brain damage, sexuality, societal culpability. There’s a lot of things that go into it.”

Rivera was asked to audition for the role by Nina Jacobson, who produced the “Hunger Games” movies; before learning of the project, his knowledge of Hernandez’s life was minimal.

“But the more I learned about it, the more I felt really passionate about the story. As an actor, anything dealing with density and complexity and analyzing your own personality and the layers in personality, that kind of complexity is something that I always crave,” Rivera says. “The more that I learned, the more that I was really, really motivated to get the part.”

Rivera wasn’t in touch with anyone who knew Hernandez in preparation for the role but rather relied heavily on the Boston Globe podcast “Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez and Football Inc.” Physically, he embarked on a three-month transformation to go from his “Hunger Games” physique, which was the leanest he’d ever been, to playing a professional football player.

“Oh my gosh. I worked out so much,” Rivera says. “FX was really generous; they hooked me up with a trainer, and we worked out four to five times a week, and then I had a football boot camp. I mean, it was tough. I started at 187 pounds and when we started [shooting] three months later, I think I was 215.”

Rivera knows that not only is “American Sports Story” the first look at him leading a project, but also a showcase of his range as an actor.

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“What I really want in general when I think about my career trajectory, is I want to do all the different things that I can possibly do. I am watching the show back. And something that I feel, which I’ve reframed my attitude about, is whenever I watch myself, I’m like, ‘I wish I did this. I wish I did this.’ And now it feels more like ‘how exciting, I have so much room to improve, I have so many ways that I can still challenge myself,’” Rivera says. “So, I really am craving to do all different kinds of genres, whatever I can get my hands on to expand my acting repertoire.”

River was born in North Carolina and spent his formative years in Boulder, Colo; he thinks of himself as a late bloomer in the acting space, as he didn’t know he was interested until he was 18. Music was his first love and he wanted to go to school for music production but the programs were all too expensive.

“I ended up auditioning for a couple of schools for musical theater, and one of them gave me a scholarship, and it was a lot of financial help for my mom and me and everybody. So I ended up going that direction,” he explains. “It’s kind of weird. It is a lot of really random choices and situations that kind of led me to where I’m at.”

The series, the first two episodes of which drop on September 17, tells the story of Hernandez’s life from his teenage years on, as he struggled with drugs, his sexuality and the death of his father, and follows as he becomes a football star but descends into his struggles.

“I think something that the show does pretty well, particularly in the later episodes, is you kind of establish that this is a person who is well-liked and who is very talented, and who is at worst, misguided early on in his life. And then it kind of starts to escalate and escalate and escalate to the point where even the audience doesn’t know who we’re looking at, even though we kind of saw him grow up. It explains without excusing,” Rivera says. “A lot of things happened in this person’s life where it’s like, if one thing was different early on, who knows?”

This article is published in Rivet’s Fall 2024 issue. Click here to read more.

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