Gisele Bündchen Opens Up About Tom Brady Divorce And Denies Giving Him An Ultimatum
Gisele Bündchen: THE MODEL is back. A month after Gisele was on the cover of Vogue Italia looking like a glamorous vampiress blood clot, she’s on the cover of April’s Vanity Fair and talking about what the hell else? Her divorce from Tom Brady. Gisele and Tom became legally free of each other in October 2022 after months upon months of hearing about how their 13-year marriage was on life support because he un-retired from football. Gisele was reportedly upset that Tom wanted to spend more time with football than his family. There was a rumor that Gis dropped a “FOOTBALL OR US” ultimatum on him. But Gisele shot that rumor down while talking to Vanity Fair, calling it “the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.” Craziest? That’s an interesting take from someone who works in an industry where girls live off laxatives and cotton balls!
Gisele’s interview with Vanity Fair happened at her luxurious compound in Costa Rica, so the article is filled with lots of descriptions of how stunning and serene it is. And it’s extra serene because Tom’s not there. Gisele put on her veil and mourned the death of her marriage with Tom:
Only two and a half months, after 13 years, and Bündchen’s emotions are still palpably raw. “It’s like a death and a rebirth,” she tells me. She is sitting cross-legged in the living room of the main house, an open-air temple in the sky that could be the lobby at Amanyara. The gated compound—complete with a pickleball court, a yoga palapa, and a chicken habitat, where the family gets its eggs and recycles its scraps—overlooks a sleek pool and, beyond that, endless ocean.
Losing a partner to divorce is often likened to a death. Bündchen is mourning “the death of my dream,” she says. “It’s tough because you imagine your life was going to be a certain way, and you did everything you could, you know?” At this, her voice breaks. She apologizes, pressing her fingertips into her eyes, which rim pink and watery. After several yogic inhale-exhales, Bündchen resumes. “I believed in fairy tales when I was a kid. I think it’s beautiful to believe in that. I mean, I’m so grateful I did.”
By “rebirth,” I don’t think Gisele meant that her coochie is blooming again thanks to her jiu-jitsu instructor/rumored piece Joaquim Valente because she says she’s single.
And despite having to compete with a leather ball for Tom’s attention, Gisele wants to make clear that she “always cheered” for Tom, and there was no ultimatum:
No such thing ever happened. She calls those characterizations “very hurtful” and “the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. Listen, I have always cheered for him, and I would continue forever. If there’s one person I want to be the happiest in the world, it’s him, believe me. I want him to achieve and to conquer. I want all his dreams to come true. That’s what I want, really, from the bottom of my heart.”
Gisele was also asked if it was true that she dumped Tom because he wanted to play just one more season in the NFL. She kicked down that rumor, too, and also denied that they split over Tom being an alleged MAGA:
“Wow, people really made it about that,” she says. “What’s been said is one piece of a much bigger puzzle,” Bündchen tells me later. “It’s not so black and white.” Bündchen also dismisses digital murmurs that politics—namely, the MAGA hat spotted in Brady’s locker in 2015—drove a wedge. “Never,” she tells me.Gi
Gisele also got into her relationship with Bridget Moynahan, the mother of Tom’s oldest child, 15-year-old Jack. Gis and Bridge now have a “great relationship” but that wasn’t always the case. You don’t say?!
“I say to Bridget—you know, I have a great relationship with her…” Bündchen pauses, then declares, “Everything in life comes with work. You have to go through the roller coaster. You have moments where you get to the sticky points and you’ve gotta overcome it.”
Did Bündchen always have a great relationship with Moynahan? I ask, somewhat rhetorically. “No!” Bündchen blurts. The two women didn’t meet for more than a year after Jack was born, but they eventually reached the point where Bündchen, Brady, and Moynahan mingled at the park in New York, where Moynahan is based, and the women hugged in the streets of Boston. “Love conquers all,” Bündchen says of her experience with Jack and his mom. “My life became so much richer because I got to learn so much from that.” The primary lesson: “Nothing is worth fighting [over].”
With Moynahan, “my goal was always, how can I be the most helpful? How can I make it the easiest I possibly can?” Bündchen reflects. “I put myself in her shoes and I was like, ‘How can I support her?’ Because in the end of the day, we are team players in ‘How are we going to do this so [Jack] can have the best life?’ ”
Back to Tom, Gisele summed up their divorce by saying that they simply grew apart and wanted different things. Gisele saying they wanted “different things” makes it sound like the third woman in their marriage, football, was the nail in their marriage’s coffin.
“Sometimes you grow together; sometimes you grow apart,” she says. “When I was 26 years old and he was 29 years old, we met, we wanted a family, we wanted things together. As time goes by, we realize that we just wanted different things, and now we have a choice to make. That doesn’t mean you don’t love the person. It just means that in order for you to be authentic and truly live the life that you want to live, you have to have somebody who can meet you in the middle, right? It’s a dance. It’s a balance.”
“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, and if you want to fly the same direction, then that’s amazing.”
Gisele’s PR team deserves a raise for the interview, but that last part makes me picture Gisele walking Tom to the top of a water slide and saying to him, “Be free! Be happy!” And then he gleefully slid into singlehood.
Here’s more of Gisele in Vanity Fair:
Pic: INSTARImages