Gisele Bündchen has opened up about her relationship with Tom Brady’s ex Bridget Moynahan, and how seeing the former couple co-parent their teenage son Jack has helped her navigate her own divorce from the NFL star.
“I say to Bridget – you know, I have a great relationship with her,” Bündchen said in a new cover story for Vanity Fair published on 22 March. “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.”
While the Brazilian supermodel may have a “great relationship” with the Sex and the City star, it wasn’t always smooth sailing. Speaking to Vanity Fair, Bündchen explained how she was 26 years old when she began dating Brady, who was then 29. In the early days of their relationship, Brady informed Bündchen that Moynahan was pregnant, which Bündchen recalled was “a challenging situation for all of us”. In fact, the two women didn’t meet for more than a year after his son Jack was born.
But when Moynahan gave birth to John “Jack” Edward Thomas Moynahan in 2007, Bündchen said that she embraced him as her “bonus child.”
“Jack came into our lives and I felt so blessed and it kind of awakened in me this desire of being a mom,” Bündchen said. “I’ve always dreamed of being a mom, but I think that happened a little faster than I thought, because now I have this beautiful little angel that I get to care for and love.”
When it came to co-parenting with the Blue Bloods actor, the former Victoria’s Secret model explained that her “goal” was to always ask, “How can I be the most helpful? How can I make it the easiest I possibly can?”
Bündchen added: “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?’”
After 15 years of helping Brady and Moynahan co-parent together, Bündchen explained how the experience has helped her maintain an amicable relationship with her ex, as they navigate shared custody over their two children. “We’re not playing against each other,” Bündchen insisted. “We are a team, and that’s beautiful. I look back and I have no regrets. I loved every bit of it.”
On 28 October 2022, Gisele Bündchen and Tom Brady announced they had decided to end their marriage after 13 years. In a statement shared to Instagram, the mother of two wrote: “With much gratitude for our time together, Tom and I have amicably finalised our divorce. My priority has always been and will continue to be our children whom I love with all my heart. We will continue co-parenting to give them the love, care and attention they greatly deserve.”
The model then acknowledged that the decision to end a marriage is “never easy,” but that she and Brady have “grown apart”.
“And while it is, of course, difficult to go through something like this, I feel blessed for the time we had together and only wish the best for Tom always,” she continued. “I kindly ask that our privacy be respected during this sensitive time.”
Meanwhile, Tom Brady has previously spoken about how he’s focused on being the “best dad” that he can possibly be to his three children. Just one month after finalising their divorce, Brady commended his own parents for the way they raised him and admitted that he wants to be like his parents when raising his own children.
“I think myself as a parent and being grateful during Thanksgiving, it’s always time for family,” he said on his SiriusXM podcast Let’s Go! with Tom Brady, Larry Fitzgerald and Jim Gray. “When you think about this holiday and the commitment that parents make and that my parents made to me and my career is unbelievable. You know what I mean?”
“I’m here in my 23rd season, looking forward to finishing strong here after Thanksgiving, and obviously with a lot of gratitude for the people that have made such a huge impact in my life and supported me throughout this amazing career,” he said. “I just want to be that for my kids. You know, I just wanna be the best dad I could be.”
