The Roast of Tom Brady on Netflix was the talk of the sports world last week, but it didn’t go over quite as the longtime New England Patriots quarterback planned.
Speaking on an episode of The Pivot podcast released Tuesday, Brady discussed his regret around how the live roast affected his children.
“I loved when the jokes were about me, I thought they were so fun. I didn’t like the way it affected my kids,” Brady told hosts Ryan Clark, Fred Taylor, and Channing Crowder. “It’s the hardest part about — the bittersweet aspect of — when you do something that you think is one way, and then all of a sudden you realize, I wouldn’t do that again because of the way that it affected, actually, the people that I care about the most in the world. It makes you in some ways a better parent, going through it, because sometimes you’re naive, you don’t know, or you get a little like, oh s***.”
Brady said it seemed like a fun idea originally, but once he heard how everyone piled on his family life, it cut a little close to home.
“Like I said, when I signed up for that, I love when people are making fun of me,” Brady added. “I wanted to do the roast because the guy (legendary roast comic) Jeff Ross became someone that I knew, you don’t see the full picture all the time. I think it’s a good lesson for me as a parent. I’m going to be a better parent as I go forward because of it, and at the same time I’m happy everyone who was there had a lot of fun.”
Brady came to Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s defense when Ross alluded to Kraft allegedly soliciting sexual favors at a massage parlor in South Florida, but mostly sat there quietly when his family came up.
After the roast, comedian Nikki Glaser acknowledged she cut deep with jokes about Brady’s ex-wife Gisele Bündchen.
Perhaps Brady didn’t realize the roast would verge on his personal life given how much fruit his NFL career offered. But it’s par for the course in a roast, and Brady clearly miscalculated the damage it could do to his teenage kids.