‘Cheer’ Season 2: Everything Coach Monica and Cast Said About Jerry Harris

Cheer season 2 didn’t shy away from Jerry Harris or the sexual misconduct allegations made against the former reality show fan favorite.

“I can’t even wrap my head around how I should feel. This has been a tough year,” head coach Monica Aldama began in the season 2 premiere, which started streaming on Netflix on Wednesday, January 12. “But then there are moments that are so wonderful. These little moments of success that keep you coming back, just the little things that add up. … I keep putting one foot in front of the other, every single day. I don’t have a choice.”

The first four episodes of the second installment of Cheer followed the 2019-2020 Navarro and Trinity Valley Community College teams as they prepared for the NCA & NDA Collegiate Cheer & Dance Championship. Filmed months before he was taken into custody in September 2020, Jerry is still part of the team.

“I wasn’t a big fan of where I was at, so I decided to get in contact with Monica, see if there are any openings and now, I’m back for my third year,” he explained in the first episode. “My favorite thing from the past two weeks was getting to work the red carpet and interview celebrities. … I guess I have a career now.”

In the second episode, Jerry is shown joking with his costars and friends about being “America’s sweetheart” as fans approach him to do “mat talk,” which he was known for after season 1.

“Now I have, like, an agent booking me all different types of opportunities and just so many doors opening for me,” he said before recording Cameos for fans.

He continued his season 1 role in the group as the optimistic one on the team.

“I bring a positive attitude to, like, everything I do,” he said in episode three. “That’s something we’ve been lacking a little bit over the past year. And to me, that’s the only challenging thing about the team, currently.”

At the end of the fourth episode, however, the squads learned that the April 2020 NCA championship was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. Five months later, Jerry was arrested on production of child pornography charges, and he has been held without bond at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago ever since. While a trial date hasn’t been set, he has a status hearing — coincidentally — set for Wednesday.

In December 2020, he pleaded not guilty to seven felony charges — four counts of sexual exploitation of children, one count of enticement, one count of receipt of child pornography and one count of travel with the intent to engage in an illicit sexual contact with a minor.

Sam and Charlie, underage twin brothers who have accused Jerry of sexual harassment, spoke out in the fifth episode, simply titled “Jerry.”

“One day in December 2018, this was my first cheer season, he messaged me on his private Instagram account, like, basically just saying, ‘Hey’ and he asked how old I was, and I told him I was 13,” Charlie claimed, noting he “knew of” Jerry because of his success in the cheerleader world. “And then after that, right off the bat, he asked me, ‘Can I have butt pics or can you send butt pics?’”

Charlie told the cameras that he sent him the photo because he was “blindsided by notoriety at the time,” explaining, “I was kind of starstruck, and I didn’t want him to not like me or to not be friends with me.”

After a couple of months, Charlie alleged that the Cheer star would make him “feel bad about myself” if he didn’t answer his messages or his text “tone” changed. When Charlie met Jerry in person for the first time at a competition, he claimed Jerry “cornered him” in the bathroom stall and was “continually pleading with me to have sex with him.”

Following the incident, Sam claimed that Jerry started messaging him too. The brothers explained that they were “scared” to tell their mother because she would report Jerry and the twins didn’t want to “lose [their] cheer friends.”

Their mom ultimately discovered an alleged message from Jerry apologizing for what he’s “done in the past” and said they shouldn’t be friends on Snapchat anymore. She subsequently discovered a video from the waist down of a man — allegedly Jerry — masturbating on her son’s phone. The family decided to take legal action after they saw Jerry be recognized by President Joe Biden.

Jerry faces a mandatory minimum 15-year sentence. Scroll through for everything the cast said about Jerry on season 2: