All Rise alumna Lindsay Mendez is set as a series regular alongside Josh Andrés Rivera and Patrick Schwarzenegger in Ryan Murphy’s FX anthology American Sports Story, Deadline has learned.
Like with the other leads, her casting was done in early 2023, before the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, we hear.
American Sports Story, a new extension of Murphy’s “American Story” franchise, is a scripted anthological limited series focusing on a prominent event involving a sports figure and re-examines it through the prism of today’s world, telling that story from multiple perspectives.
The first installment, written by Stu Zicherman, is based on the podcast Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez and Football Inc from the Boston Globe and Wondery. It charts the rise and fall of NFL superstar Aaron Hernandez, played by Rivera, and explores the connections of the disparate 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 is executive producing with Murphy, Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson, Alexis Martin Woodall and Brad Falchuk. Hernan Lopez and Marshall Lewy of Wondery executive produce alongside Linda Pizutti Henry and Ira Napoliello of the Boston Globe.
Mendez, a Tony Award winner for Carousel, is currently back on Broadway toplining the praised revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll along opposite Daniel Radcliffe and Jonathan Groff. She most recently was a series regular on the Warner Bros. series All Rise for CBS and then OWN. Mendez is repped by Gartner Group Entertainment and attorney Mitch Smelkinson at GGSSC.
Lindsay Mendez Joins Ryan Murphy’s ‘American Sports Story’ Season 1
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