Decency
All Rise alum Lindsay Mendez is set to series star alongside Josh Andres Rivera and Patrick Schwarzenegger in Ryan Murphy’s FX anthology American Sports Story, Deadline has learned.
As with the other main actors, the casting took place in early 2023, before the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, as we learn.
American Sports Story, a new addition to Murphy’s “American Story” franchise, is a limited, anthology scripted series that focuses on a significant event involving a sports figure and re-examines it through the prism of today’s world and that story from multiple perspectives told.
The first part, written by Stu Zicherman, is based on the Boston Globe and Wondery podcast Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez and Football Inc. It traces the rise and fall of NFL superstar Aaron Hernandez, played by Rivera, and examines the connections between the different strands of his identity, his family, his career, his suicide and their legacy in sports and American culture. Schwarzenegger portrays Hernandez’s friend, former college teammate and fellow former NFL star Tim Tebow.
Mendez plays Tanya Singleton, Aaron’s cousin and favorite relative who becomes his de facto mother.
Zicherman will executive produce alongside Murphy, Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson, Alexis Martin Woodall and Brad Falchuk. Hernan Lopez and Marshall Lewy of Wondery are executive producers alongside Linda Pizutti Henry and Ira Napoliello of the Boston Globe.
Mendez, a Tony Award winner for “Carousel,” is currently back on Broadway, starring alongside Daniel Radcliffe and Jonathan Groff in the acclaimed revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll.” Most recently, she was a regular on the Warner Bros. series All Rise for CBS and then on OWN. Mendez is represented by Gartner Group Entertainment and attorney Mitch Smelkinson at GGSSC.