Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen are in the news because there is a new book coming out about them. It is a book by Lars Anderson titled Brady: An American Story and the Price of Greatness. Now, I don’t know Lars Anderson, but I do find some of these excerpts, as reprinted in The Daily Mail, very interesting and very telling.
Megyn’s Reporting
The picture he is painting is of a woman who desperately wanted more time with her husband and the father of her children and was repeatedly denied. I will tell you, based on my own sources–and I do have good ones–that’s exactly right.
I have reported this on The Megyn Kelly Show before. She wanted him to be a husband and a father. And this is where the reporting splits because Lars seems to be reporting that Tom was all football and he wouldn’t give her the time that she wanted. My own reporting is that he was not all football. He was all football during the day, but Tom Brady, even when he was married to Gisele, liked to go out and party. A lot.
Maybe it was not while football season was going on or before a big game, but I know plenty of people and I know where he was going. This was one of her objections, I have been told by a reliable source, and she did not want him hanging out in clubs and out late carousing with dudes in bars, etc. She wanted him to be home with her. She wanted an actual husband, and my information is Tom Brady really wasn’t interested.
Trouble in Paradise
The reporting of Lars Anderson is interesting though because he is writing that she begged him repeatedly to spend more time with her in the years preceding their divorce. Minutes after Brady led the New England Patriots to a historic comeback against the Atlanta Falcons Super Bowl LI, Anderson reported that the first words Gisele said to her husband of eight years were, “Would now be the perfect time to retire?”
Brady allegedly acted like he hadn’t heard her, and Gisele reportedly tried to ask him two more times that night before he answered, “Too bad, babe. I’m having too much fun right now.”
After the Patriots lost the 2018 Super Bowl to the Philadelphia Eagles, Anderson wrote that Gisele tried to get through to her husband again with a handwritten letter explaining why their marriage was not working and how she needed more of his time and also of his heart. That apparently led the couple to marriage counseling, but Brady eventually “filed the heartfelt letter in a drawer.”
By 2020, Anderson noted that the family moved from New England to Tampa after Brady signed with the Buccaneers. Gisele reportedly chose to homeschool their two children, son Benjamin and daughter Vivian (Brady also has an older son with Jack with actress Bridget Moynahan), and expected her husband to only play one more season.
The Un-Retirement
One year turned to two and Brady eventually announced a short-lived retirement on February 1, 2022, at the age of 44. Just 22 days later, he reversed course and said he would return for a twenty-third season with his sights set on an eighth Super Bowl ring. “I’ve realized my place is still on the field and not in the stands. That time will come, but it’s not now,” Brady claimed at the time.
Initially, Anderson noted that Gisele “made the right noises” and expressed public support for the decision. “I don’t think relationships just happen. It’s never the fairy tale people wanted to believe it is,” she said that summer. “When you love someone, you don’t put them in a jail and say you have to live this life. You set them free to be who they are.”
But the cracks began to show when Brady showed up at Bucs training camp in July down 20 pounds and looking “cadaverous.” Anderson reported that people close to him were worried he was ill. One source told Anderson that Brady “seemed miserable,” and it was believed he was upset about his failing marriage.
According to Anderson, Gisele was upset about Brady’s change of plans and flew off to Costa Rica. He recounted a “frantic, nearly two-week effort” Brady allegedly embarked on to “rescue” his floundering union. Those around Brady described him as “an empty shell of who he was” when he returned, but he was FaceTiming with Gisele between team meetings.
The Devastating Divorce
Things had seemingly returned to normal for the pair until, Anderson reported, Gisele, who is into astrology, told Brady, “We are not compatible.” Tom and Gisele then announced their divorce in October 2022 after 13 years of marriage.
In February 2025, she welcomed a child with her jujitsu instructor-turned-husband Joaquim Valente. Anderson wrote that Brady was stunned by the pregnancy and shared a pointed photo of himself one month after the birth on Instagram. His right arm was extended as he clutched a football silhouetted by the sunset. “True love,” he captioned the pic.
Anderson reported that, to those who knew Brady well, there was no ambiguity to the post that a friend described as “the softest middle finger.”
Tom’s ‘True Love’
Presumably, the “true love” being football, not his wife. I mean, you might mention your children there–unless they are actually not above football for you. Perhaps they are not because, when Gisele was asking Tom to stay home with her and their children and he was allegedly saying no because football was “too much fun,” he was saying no to time with his kids too. He was saying no to helping raise them in a more active way.
I have seen Tom Brady with his kids, and I think he is a loving, good father. I do. I just think football has been his number one love, as that Instagram post seemed to suggest.
The point is simply: What might have been if Tom and Gisele could have found a way between his enormous career and hers to actually raise the kids in a more active, present way? Maybe their marriage could have been saved. Maybe the kids would have had more access to this superstar that America loves.
It is something to be considered before you get married and, really, before you have the children. And on that front, Gisele is responsible as well. She knew what she was marrying. He was not projecting stay-at-home dad vibes, and it was an enormous request to basically ask him to give up his career because, unlike her modeling career, NFL football cannot be done full time. Modeling can, but NFL football cannot.
I am sure the children receive many, many benefits as a result of their dad being Tom Brady and being one of the most celebrated athletes in the world, but all this is very sad to me because I just think of a loving wife who was asking to actually share her life with a husband and could not get a yes. And on that front, my reporting has dovetailed with this reporting here, so it was not a surprise to me.
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 1,407 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.