Aaron Rodgers publicly opens old wounds and sheds light on his strained relationship with his family in a three-part docuseries for Netflix titled Aaron Rodgers: Enigma.
“At times when you have some dysfunction or some separation in your family life, you have to kind of re-parent yourself and give yourself what you didn’t get or wanted to hear more of when you were a kid, and I think for me, I just wanted to hear, ‘I’m proud of you,’” Rodgers says during the series.
Rodgers continued, “I had to find a way to be my own parent in those moments and say, ‘Hey, f*** being perfect. I’m proud of who you are and what you’ve accomplished on and off the field.’ And forgiveness for all the mistakes because I was just trying to do the best I could, and a lot of times, it wasn’t good enough.”
Rumblings and allusions to Rodgers’ long-strained relationship with his family have been known for years but never addressed in detail as they are now. However, Rodgers is ready to open up.
“It wasn’t like I was super-duper close with everybody in the family,” Rodgers says. “In actuality, it goes back to stuff from high school that made me feel distant. Stuff from college, stuff post-college. And I was quiet about it. Because I thought the best way to do it was just don’t talk about it publicly. And what do they do?
“They go on a bullsh*t show and leave two empty chairs,” Rodgers explains.
“They all agree that this was a good thing to do, to leave two empty chairs on a stupid dating show that my brother just went on to get famous?”Rodgers is referencing a scene from the 2016 season of The Bachelorette, when his brother, Jordan, would have an empty place setting for his older brother to symbolize the turbulent relationship.
According to TMZ Sports, Rodgers’ family has not commented on the Netflix documentary.