Jaylen Barron Found the Compassion in Controversy in 'American Sports Story'

Jaylen Barron already knew of Shayanna Jenkins before she signed on to the FX series American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez. After watching one of the several unscripted projects documenting Hernandez’s rise to NFL fame and subsequent incarceration, Barron, like most people who followed the highly-publicized trial in 2015, thought she knew the kind of people the notorious couple were. Hernandez was convicted of killing Jenkins’s sister’s boyfriend, Odin Lloyd; Jenkins remained his loyal partner throughout the trial. “I was like, Couldn't be me,” Barron tells Marie Claire of her first impression of Jenkins. “That's a real rider, and that's not me. So it was really interesting that it literally ended up being me [playing her]."

But now that she’s spent 10 episodes in Jenkins’ shoes on the Ryan Murphy-produced true-crime series, Barron feels much more compassion for her real-life counterpart. Over light bites at SoHo House Hollywood in early October, the former Blindspotting and Free Rein star speaks fondly of Shayanna, defending the former NFL fiancé as she would an old friend but still making sure to choose her words carefully as any media-trained actress would. Barron, 27, grew up near Los Angeles in the Inland Empire, and the self-professed lover girl knows that there’s a world of difference between her upbringing as a child actor and Jenkins’ in the town of Bristol, Connecticut, that shaped Jenkins’ decisions in her early 20s. [Ed note: Jenkins, who’s now an insurance broker and mother of two, was not involved in American Sports Story’s production, and has not publicly commented on the series.] In addition to watching Jenkins’ media interviews following Hernandez’s death, and Hernandez’s games with the Florida Gators and New England Patriots, Barron based her performance on universal feelings: the urge to give a cute boy the answers in English class, the discomfort at not knowing what a crush is thinking. “I really feel like she did the best that she could with her knowledge and what she had going for her,” she says of the woman she used to criticize.

Barron calls American Sports Story her “first big girl role,” and she acknowledges the toll and the pressure of bringing such a troubled and ultimately tragic story to life. “For the next job I get, I'll have a better practice of separating myself from the characters,” she says, ahead of the series’ final two episodes. “Before I used to judge actors for getting so wrapped up in their characters. I'm like, It's so not that deep. Until you get a role that you deeply connect with, and you feel like you owe it to these real-life people and yourself to tell a story right.”

Here, Barron speaks with Marie Claire about adding levity and authenticity to her performance, the difficulty in Jenkins’ choices, and why she hopes viewers will leave the series with more compassion for celebrities.

Marie Claire: Were you familiar with the true story of Aaron Hernandez’s trial before hearing about the role of Shayanna?

Jaylen Barron: The Netflix documentary dropped when I was 18, and that's when I really was introduced to Aaron… What [playing Shayanna] taught me was that people make choices for their own reasons. We see people and then we judge them, but they have a whole life that affects who they are and the choices that they make. So for Shayanna, every choice she made, in my eyes, made sense, and she stood on it. What I really respect about her is that she was so loyal to him and loved him so much. Not only as just a partner, but as a friend. You're there for your friends, and she stayed there with him. I no longer have that [feeling of] Couldn't be me, because I get it. She loved him. That was the father of her child. Also, she was a 22-year-old Black girl. Everybody was looking at her like she should make these really wise decisions at her age, when she was just doing what she knows how to do.

The choice that she made with her sister, I couldn't imagine having to do that. I feel like she truly looked at Aaron as her husband, and in my values and the way I was raised, your husband comes before everybody, except your children. I know some people might think that sounds crazy, but you guys are locked in. This is literally a vow and a bond. It would make sense why she would make that choice to stick beside him over everyone else. Controversial take, but that's what I feel.

MC: What was your process in preparing and researching the role?

JB: I don't have a really extensive process of what I did, except just the preparation of watching all of Aaron's interviews, all of Shay's interviews, looking at her Instagram. I also watched a lot of his football tapes because I'm unfamiliar with football. I know a little bit more now than I did before, but I just wanted to see how good he was and have an understanding of why he was so admired, and why she loved him so much. With how charming he was in his interviews and how handsome he was, I was like, 'I get it. I do. I understand.' And I had to.

I had to feel like Shayanna. I had to develop a crush on him, so that way when I would go on set, it felt authentic. I was excited to talk to Aaron (played by Josh Rivera in the series) and be around Aaron, because Aaron is the coolest guy in school, and Aaron is the football player and he's the man. I needed to have that.

MC: Were you able to actually talk to Shayanna herself?

JB: The show did such a good job with finding out research and having their own investigative team to figure out what was going on. I was only familiar with her through interviews, so I did not get the chance to talk to her. I wish I did.

MC: We don’t get to see a lot of Shayanna as a high schooler. How did you approach building her character as a teenager, and then as someone who's going to community college when she reconnects with him?

JB: With the high school scenes, the nostalgia of the clothes helped a lot. When you get your hair done a certain way and you put on those outfits—like in that first scene with this big belt on and a swoop bang in my face—it just brings you back to that time. Then in episode 5, [Aaron] goes to see her and invites her to a Patriots party, and she's in her T-Mobile clothing, because she's working up at the cell phone store. I feel like that allowed me to have a little layer of insecurity, because she is a bit insecure talking to this almost-millionaire football-player boy she went to high school with. I think just being in that mode of like, Oh, does he like me? He's here, but I'm still that bitch. I'm still that girl. You have to work hard to get me.

Shayanna had such depth and layers to her. There's like an undertone of her just not getting it, and not feeling herself in that environment. She's just trying to figure it out, and I'm still in real life trying to figure it out. She's taught me to be more comfortable with myself and my imperfections. It was a lot of fun going to set, and being able to lean into that insecurity that I'm carrying around with me every day and put it on camera for people to see. I would just think about any time that a man made me feel nervous, and I would do my thing.

MC: The show depicts Shayanna and Aaron growing up in that environment where a wife or girlfriend has to be a ride or die. When you were playing those scenes where Shayanna’s marriage came into conflict with her family, were you able to relate to how she was torn between them?

JB: I relate to her one-hundred percent in the aspect of how loyal she is, being a good girl, and too good of a woman that somebody could walk all over you and take advantage of your loyalty to them. I went through a breakup, and you have the whole world telling you these different things about your person. You're like, No, but I know this person. But then you could also see exactly what they're saying, and then your person's telling you something different. It's all of these different voices, but the one thing that you do know at the end of the day is, I can't leave. I don't want to leave because this is the person that I see. You guys don't see what I see in him. She was loyal to a fault because there were certain things that she could have walked away from but she didn't. I don't have any children so I can't imagine how difficult it's to walk away from the father of your child like that. I just related to her in the aspect of how much she loved and how hard she loved.

MC: Though the series is a drama, there are also naturally comedic moments in your performance. How did you balance those moments of levity in such a serious story?

JB: Aaron was really goofy and silly and literally labeled as the class clown. He was very charismatic. For him to fall in love with a woman, I feel like she had to be able to handle it and bounce off of it, because he was joking with her all the time. It was important to highlight the fact that they had a common understanding of who one another was. They had a high-school sweetheart bond. It wasn't so serious all the time because he wasn't serious. It would just be little light moments of hanging out with your boyfriend. Your best friend. A little kiki here and there.

I wanted the audience to be able to see that, and some of the things were not scripted. I would add that in there. I would talk to the director and say, ‘I feel like there should be something funny between them. They have to like each other.’ I wanted to get across why they fell in love and why they clicked, because nobody was able to see that from the trial. Everybody just looked at her like, ‘Why would you be with him?’ I didn't want it to just be about sex and just because he's the football player. No, she appreciated him and he appreciated her for who they were. It was a partnership.

MC: Do you ever feel like, if Aaron wasn’t arrested, that there would've been a point where Shayanna eventually confronted Aaron?

JB: I feel like she wouldn't have. I don't know her in real life and the choices that she would make. Again, I'm going off of who I played. For me, if my goal is to marry this man and have this life, and have my daughter have a present father the way I did not, I'm not saying anything. As hard as that might be for some people to understand, we all know that in this industry, men of a certain stature do certain things, some of them. And sometimes their wives turn a blind eye because they feel like they see a bigger picture. In this specific circumstance, she wanted a father for her child and to not have a broken home. She's going to deal with things for her daughter. People want to keep their families together every day. So I wouldn't say anything if that was my goal, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay. I think that a man can really warp your mind, and really take you to a dark place of self-doubt, thinking that you're not going to find anybody better than him. Just a place of not realizing who you are and what you're capable of. It's hard. Men have made me doubt myself.

MC: Shayanna is the last person we see when American Sports Story ends. What do you hope that viewers take away from watching this entire saga?

JB: To have mercy on people that they don't know. To have empathy towards this woman who was 22 years old and trying to make the right choices. I also hope we no longer look at, not only athletes, but celebrities in almost a godly way and [put them] on this impossible pedestal, when they still struggle with mental illness, and they still struggle with figuring out who they are, especially Black and Brown men. I feel like during that time, there wasn't a lot of access to therapy, and this was only 2010, 2013? All of this stuff that we're talking about with mental health awareness and health is very new. So during that time, being a Black and Brown man and struggling with your sexuality, and also having CTE could not be easy. It is not easy even to this day.

I really hope they take away the fact that Odin was not lost in this story, and that his story is the biggest and most important one of all, because he's not here due to the lack of mental health awareness within our community and society, with football players especially. We all expect men to stand up and just get over something. We never take the time to ask them if they're okay. So hopefully this will make people a little bit more aware of the people in their lives, and not to judge everybody, and not to judge a woman for staying with a man.

I feel like, especially women amongst women, it's so easy to look at someone and be like, 'Bitch, you are crazy as hell. Couldn't be me.' But you can't say that because you never know when it is going to be you. It could very easily be you. There's a lot of lessons you can take from here, from everybody's point of view. These are real people and I just don't want them to be judged for society only seeing one color of them, one side of them. I love Shayanna genuinely. She doesn't know me at all, but she has no idea how much I love her. I care about her a lot. I wish that it was different for her, and I wish that she didn't have this experience, and I wish Aaron's story didn't end up like this, because I love him too. It sounds a little off, but it's real.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.