Jussie Smollett asserts innocence while promoting new film

NFL star Aaron Hernandez in FX's new biopic series American Sports Story, tells Newsweek that contacting anyone from the New England Patriots franchise or the late tight end's family in preparation for the controversial role may have "complicated" things.Before the first two episodes of the Ryan Murphy drama premiered on Tuesday, Rivera, 29, told Newsweek that he had limited knowledge of Hernandez's fall from grace before accepting the role in the show which "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."When asked if the West Side Story alum reached out to anyone who knew Hernandez personally or professionally, Rivera responded, "I didn't have that resource.""I also felt like there are elements of that that might have made it just a little bit more complicated to proceed because when you have advisors and consultation for such a complicated story already, it's kind of like you have people with skin in the game that want they want it to be painted a certain way," he continued."It was kind of nice to not really have the ability to do that because that just sort of let me take all the information I had and try to mold it in the way I saw it," Rivera explained, admitting he was initially "really nervous" to take on such a heavily scrutinized figure."I saw it as objectively as I could. Coming into it, I didn't really know that much about it so I was seeing a lot of this information for the first time, which was, I think, helpful to kind of experience that in a vacuum without the input of people who are very passionate about it."Rivera continued, "The way that I see it is, I was given all of this information and I learned about this person, and my job is to just do the best that I can do at portraying this story That's kind of the beginning and end of it for me.