Aaron Rodgers Reveals Complex Reasons Behind His Family's Estrangement

After growing up "in a really conservative, small-town environment" in Chico, Calif., Aaron Rodgers said in the Netflix docuseries Aaron Rodgers: Enigma, transferring from Butte College to University of California, Berkeley, was admittedly an eye-opening experience for him. "So that was fun, to have my ideologies tested."

But, as he recalled, he was already traveling a path that was taking him further and further away from how he was raised by dad Ed Rodgers and mom Darla Rodgers.

The "white, dogmatic church" he grew up in "didn’t really serve me," Aaron said. "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. Somebody has to be wrong, somebody has to be right. I just slowly uncoupled from that in high school."

So being in a city like Berkeley "that challenged my beliefs" (and where he was sleeping in on Sunday after games instead of going to church), he continued, "definitely helped me to begin to question more things."

After capping off the Green Bay Packers' 2011-12 NFL season with a Super Bowl victory—which, until then, Aaron thought was the holy grail he was seeking—he started to wonder what else was out there.

"I really just desperately wanted to be more than  a football player," he said in the series, "and so I started my spiritual journey."

Aaron got into the teachings of progressive spiritual leader Rob Bell, author of What Is the Bible? (which the athlete is seen reading in the series), and started reading more philosophy and self-help books.

Appreciating what he found to be Rob's inclusive, nonjudgmental approach to faith, "He was a big help for me to totally unravel the religion of my youth," Aaron said in Enigma.

Through his readings, "I found a courage to speak my feelings better," he continued. "So I started to stand up to institutions of my youth, and that was everything from organized religion, my parents, dogma, ideology. That definitely changed the dynamics of my family, because I was just questioning all of it."

Winning a Super Bowl vaulted Aaron to another tier of fame, the athlete recalling how during the summer of 2011 he was "paparazzi'd" for the first time during a trip to Hawaii.

"I was like, 'F--k, life's different now," he said. And after he was on TV more, he added, "my whole ability to move around with relative anonymity changed."

He added, "I didn't do myself any favors with some of the girls I dated after that, that were in the public eye. I definitely hated it at first. Like really despised it. I enjoyed my private life. I enjoyed being able to go places. But from Super Bowl MVP, [league] MVP, State Farm commercials, that got a little more difficult."

While the doc flashed to pictures of him with three famous exes, that was the entirety of what Aaron said about his high-profile relationships with Olivia Munn, Danica Patrick and Shailene Woodley (who, incidentally, he was engaged to and didn't just date). 

Olivia, who dated Aaron from 2014 until 2017, denied rumors that she played a role in her ex's estrangement from his family, saying on Andy Cohen Live in 2018, "He hadn't spoken to the parents and one brother for, like, eight months before we started dating."

Aaron reiterated to biographer Ian O'Connor, author of 2024's Out of the Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers, that his issues with his family were "deep rooted" and Olivia "has nothing to do with all the years" they haven't spoken.

"There was a lot of times, when I became real famous," Aaron said in Enigma, "where I heard from a lot of people, including family members, who where it was like, ‘Your life is too big, we need you to be smaller. Be smaller, don't talk about your life.'"

Feeling woefully misunderstood, he continued, "It always hurt me because I just feel like you don’t see me. 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 changed after that. Friendships, family."

Aaron said that, pre-estrangement, he wasn't "super-duper close" with everybody in his family anyway.

"I was close with my little brother," he recalled, referring to younger sibling Jordan Rodgers. "But in actuality it goes back to stuff from high school that kind of made me feel distant. Stuff in college, stuff post-college. And I was quiet about it. 'Cause I thought the best way to do it was, just don’t talk about it publicly. And what do they do?"

In 2016, Jordan appeared on The Bachelorette—and, incidentally, he's been married to rose-bearer JoJo Fletcher since 2022.

When he brought JoJo home to meet his folks and eldest brother Luke Rodgers, there were two empty chairs at the dinner table—purportedly for Aaron and then-girlfriend Olivia—and all of a sudden millions of people found out the Packers QB was estranged from the rest of the family.

"We miss our brother," Luke said on The Bachelorette. "We just are trusting that God brings things full circle. And just wish that everything would just get back to us being a family."

But Aaron threw a flag on the play.

"They go on a bulls--t show and leave two empty chairs," he said in Enigma. "They all agreed this was like 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."

Aaron reiterated in the series that he was never even invited to the dinner, which was held during the NFL season.

A dinner "I was never asked to go to," he said, "not that I would have gone."

E! News reached out to Jordan, Ed and Darla for comment on what Aaron had to say in Enigma but has not yet heard back. 

Jordan told E! in 2016 after his hometown episode aired that he "made a commitment to go on there and be honest with JoJo and make sure that she knew everything" about where he was coming from.

Aaron has embraced taking ayahuasca—"It's the hardest medicine possible, that I've tried"—as an essential part of his journey, also touting its healing power for "mind, body, spirit."

"I was searching, for sure," he said in Enigma. "My life was through one lens, of organized religion. Where are people in life finding deep peace and centeredness and presence outside of what I knew?"

Speaking of the divide between him and his family, Aaron said he "found a lot of resistance" once he started researching other religions and plant medicine, "doing things that, compared to what I grew up in, would be considered an alternative lifestyle."

As for his family, he continued, "You know, they’re living as best they can. That is, still engulfed in organized religion, which works for them. That's great. So as much as they might not like what they see, love and respect and gratitude for how I was raised, because it wouldn’t have turned me into who I am today."

But could their paths reconverge?

"People ask me, 'Is there hope for a reconciliation?'" Aaron said. "I say, 'Yeah, of course. Of course.'"

He added, "I don’t want them to fail, to struggle, to have any strife or issues. I don't wish any ill will on them at all. It's more like this: We're just different steps on the timeline of our own journeys."