Aaron Rodgers aired a bevy of grievances during a wide-ranging conversation on The Pat McAfee Show — including a dig at his family amid their storied, ongoing feud.
“If you look at the saga with my family, for years it was one-sided,” Rodgers, 42, said on Wednesday, March 4. “They were making shots in the media saying bulls***.”
He continued, “I never said anything until it got to the point where I’m like, ‘Alright, enough is enough.’”
Aaron has been estranged from his family for years — including his parents, Ed and Darla, and his younger brother, Jordan — which he discussed openly in the 2024 Netflix docuseries Aaron Rodgers: Enigma.
“I grew up in a very white, dogmatic church and that just didn’t really serve me,” Aaron explained. “It was very rigid in structure, I’m not a rigid person. Shame, guilt, judgment. It was like, ‘We have the truth, our way or the highway. Our way is heaven, your way is hell.’ Even talking to my parents, it was very black and white. Like, somebody has to be wrong [and] somebody has to be right. I just slowly uncoupled from that in high school.”
As his football career blossomed, Aaron said that his increased notoriety made things even more difficult.
“There was a lot of times when I became real famous that I heard from a lot of people — including family members — where it was like, ‘Your life is too big. We need you to be smaller. Be smaller. Don’t talk about your life,’” Rodgers recalled in the docuseries. “That always hurt me because I just feel like you don’t see me.”
He continued, “This is not something I ever desired or wanted other than playing on Sundays. It can definitely change the people around your circle because it can be intoxicating, the fame and notoriety. So definitely relationships change after that — friendships, family.”
Aaron zeroed in on his brother Jordan’s appearance on The Bachelorette in 2016, where he eventually got engaged to his now-wife JoJo Fletcher. During hometown dates, Aaron was a no-show, so producers left two empty seats at a dinner table for him and his then-girlfriend, Olivia Munn.
“They go on a bulls*** show and leave two empty chairs,” Aaron said on Enigma. “They all agreed this was a good thing to do, to leave two empty chairs at a stupid dating show that my brother just went on to get famous — his words, not mine. That he ended up winning. But a dinner that was during the season, I was never asked to go to. Not that I would’ve gone.”
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