It’s fair to ask, then, whether there’s anything left to say about Hernandez, the Connecticut native whose horrific crimes cost three lives and cut short a promising NFL career. Stuart Zicherman, creator and writer of the new FX series, “American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez,” thinks there is.

“I didn’t really know for sure until I read the Globe article,” Zicherman said. “In our modern news cycle, stories are simplified or sensationalized, and Aaron was always portrayed as a monster. The Globe’s reporting opened it up, and the levels of complexity made it a different story.”

The FX show, the latest installment in executive producer Ryan Murphy’s “American Story” franchise, is based on the Globe/Wondery podcast, “Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez and Football Inc.” The show, which debuts Tuesday on FX and streams on Hulu the next day, will run for more than 10 episodes and chronicles the trajectory of Hernandez’s life — from Bristol, Conn., where he grew up with an angry, abusive father; to Gainesville, Fla., where he blossomed as a talented but troubled college football player; to Massachusetts, where excessive drug use and mounting paranoia led him to increasingly violent behavior.

In 2015, just three years after a Super Bowl appearance and a $41 million contract with the Patriots, Hernandez, then just 25, was behind bars. He had been convicted of murdering Odin Lloyd, a good-natured, semi-pro football player who was dating the sister of Hernandez’s fiancée, and charged with the 2012 murders of two other men, Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado. (Although he was later acquitted of those murders, Hernandez was convicted of unlawful possession of the firearm used in the killings.)

With many now viewing the former football star as a ruthless killer, Zicherman said the challenge in the writers’ room was to give Hernandez “humanity, depth and complexity” but to do so without rationalizing his criminal behavior.

So “American Sports Story” addresses aspects of Hernandez’s background and personality that may have contributed to his downfall, including his sometimes abusive home life, the possible effects of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) caused by repeated football-related blows to the head, his discomfort with his sexuality, his rampant drug and alcohol use and a fascination with guns.

“My approach was to explore what Aaron did, how he did it and why he did it, but without ever justifying the fact that he did it,” said Zicherman, whose TV writing credits include episodes of “The Americans” and “The Affair.”

“We will never forgive Aaron for being a murderer,” Zicherman said.

The show comes with the usual caveat. At the end of each episode, an on-screen message reminds viewers that “American Sports Story” is a dramatization, not a documentary. While it is inspired by real events, some characters, characterizations, incidents, locations and dialogue in the series are “fictional or invented.”

Actor Josh Andres Rivera, who plays Hernandez, said the role was appealing because of the football player’s complicated backstory, particularly his strained relationship with his father, his secrecy about his bisexuality and the way some powerful people — notably Urban Meyer, Hernandez’s coach at the University of Florida, and Patriots owner Robert Kraft and coach Bill Belichick — ignored or minimized his off-field struggles.

“Aaron learns that he can get away with things because he’s physically talented. He’s a toy that people can win with,” Rivera said. “It’s a lesson that he learns very early on and unfortunately, his ability to get away with things really becomes a weapon.”

Rivera, who weighed about 185 pounds when he played Chino in Steven Spielberg’s 2021 remake of “West Side Story,” said he had to gain quite a bit of weight to get close to Hernandez’s 245 pounds. “A big part of the pre-production process was eating a ton of food and working out all the time,” he said.

But the role required more than big muscles, a prosthetic device to raise the bridge of the actor’s nose and the meticulous application of temporary tattoos up and down his arms and across his chest and back. Rivera also studied how Hernandez, whose mother, Terri, is Italian and father, Dennis, is Puerto Rican, carried himself — the way he walked and talked.

“There was a level of bravado and confidence that he had, I think, halfway worked in my body. I channeled that as best I could,” Rivera said. “But I couldn’t push it so far that it didn’t feel good or make it look natural.”

While Belichick, Kraft and Hernandez’s former University of Florida teammate Tim Tebow (played by actor Patrick Schwarzenegger) all play prominent roles in the story, former Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, who scored 20 touchdowns with Hernandez in their three seasons together, is barely present in the series.

“It never really struck me,” Zicherman said of the relationship between Hernandez and Brady. “This is really more about the culture of the Patriots.”

But the series is also about the bond between the bruising NFL player and his devoted fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins, the mother of Hernandez’s only child, a daughter. (The couple attended Bristol Central High School together and became a couple after Hernandez was drafted by the Patriots in 2010.)

Actress Jaylen Barron, who plays Jenkins on the series, said she didn’t know much about the Hernandez saga until she watched the three-part Netflix docuseries “Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez,” which debuted in 2020.

“I remember looking at Shayanna specifically and saying, ‘Can’t be me. Can’t be me,'” Barron said. “And here we are. It’s, basically, me. I’m here, doing this.”

Barron, who appeared in the Starz series “Blindspotting” and Showtime’s “Shameless,” believes Jenkins has been misrepresented by some in the media, portraying her as a thoughtless accomplice rather than a young woman who refused to believe her baby’s father was capable of murder.

“When this first happened, she was ridiculed in the media… It’s so easy to paint people as bad guys,” Barron said. “It was important to me that we gave Shayanna some dignity. She didn’t know what she was doing — she was a new mom trying to figure out her life.”

Even though most people know how Hernandez’s story ends, Zicherman thinks “American Sports Story” will give them food for thought.

“What was his journey?” he said. “If we’re going to say Aaron Hernandez wasn’t born a killer, then what was he?”

Mark Shanahan can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @MarkAShanahan.