Rising above the drama. Bridget Moynahan unexpectedly found herself in the spotlight following her 2006 split from Tom Brady and her high-profile pregnancy. The Blue Bloods actress dated Brady from 2004 to 2006 and learned that she was pregnant with their child months after their split, when the NFL star had already moved on with his now-wife, Gisele Bündchen. Moynahan gave birth to son John “Jack” Edward Thomas in 2007 and later reflected on the “traumatic” experience of welcoming a child in the midst of a media frenzy.
“I’m not sure anyone — and I could be wrong in this — grows up thinking, I want to be a single mom,” she told Harper’s Bazaar in June 2008, reflecting on her complicated status with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback. “You really have to weigh out all the pros and cons and how it will fit into your life professionally, spiritually, and emotionally. Doing it on your own when it wasn’t expected comes with a lot of fears and anxieties. But I felt 100 percent that I could do this.”
Brady tied the knot with Bündchen in February 2009 and the pair welcomed their first child together, son Benjamin, 10 months later. They also share daughter Vivian, born in December 2012. In her 2018 memoir, Lessons: My Path to a Meaningful Life, Bündchen admitted that Moynahan’s pregnancy “wasn’t an easy time” for her either.
“Two months into our relationship, Tom told me that his ex-girlfriend was pregnant. The very next day, the news was everywhere and I felt my world had been turned upside down,” the supermodel wrote at the time. Despite the challenging circumstance, Bündchen still has so much love for her “bonus child,” Jack. “[He made] my heart expand in ways I didn’t know was possible,” she wrote.
While her journey to motherhood might not have gone exactly as planned, Moynahan is grateful for her blended family. “My son has two loving parents and an extended family, whether it’s cousins or stepmothers or boyfriends,” she previously told More magazine. “My son is surrounded by love.” Brady, for his part, reflected on the unique progression of his relationship with Bündchen and Moynahan’s pregnancy during a candid interview on The Howard Stern Show.
“I didn’t want to have kids or get married until my late 30s. That was the plan,” Brady recalled in April 2020. “It was an interesting time because we found out after that my ex-girlfriend was pregnant with my oldest son. We were forced into this very important thing in our lives at a new part of our relationship. In a lot of ways, I found out a lot about Gisele through this experience, and she found out a lot about me dealing with a situation that was not a very easy one. … It was hard for my wife and for my son’s mom because she didn’t envision that either.”
While the experience “challenged” everyone involved, Brady thought they “all made the best of the situation” and gushed over his firstborn son. “My heart explodes when I think of him. He’s the greatest kid you could ever ask for,” the football pro said.
‘Traumatic’ Heartbreak
“There’s no reason why my son years down the line would need to read anything [personal] about his mother or his father,” Moynahan told Harper’s Bazaar in June 2008, attempting to distance herself from the drama of her past relationship. “Going through that traumatic time of being heartbroken and then being pregnant turned my whole life upside down and inside out and just knocked the wind out of me. But I got so much out of that. It’s golden and it’s tough and it was f–ked up. But now I have a child and it’s the best thing in the world.”
Though the Ramona and Beezus actress would value the presence of “a strong male figure” in Jack’s life, she added, “I’d rather be alone [than] with somebody who doesn’t work. I don’t need that, and my son doesn’t need that.”
No Regrets
In a February 2011 interview with More magazine, the I, Robot actress admitted that Brady “wasn’t holding my hand” in the hospital during their son’s birth. However, Moynahan wouldn’t have had it any other way. “There’s not a second I regret having a child on my own,” she said at the time.
No Shade to Gisele
“I never made a comment about Gisele or Tom publicly,” Moynahan told More magazine in February 2011, two years after the former Patriots quarterback married the Brazilian model. “I have a relationship with these people on a daily basis. I’m raising a child, and it’s public. My son has two loving parents and an extended family, whether it’s cousins or stepmothers or boyfriends. My son is surrounded by love.”
‘Congrats TB’
After a federal judge tossed Brady’s four-game suspension from the NFL amid the infamous “Deflategate” controversy, Moynahan celebrated her former flame’s freedom. “Yippee! I can go back to private texts and enjoying the game congrats #TB and @Patriots #letsmoveon,” she joked via Twitter in September 2015.
‘I Love’ Being Jack’s Mom
More than a decade after welcoming Jack, the Coyote Ugly actress told Us exclusively that motherhood helped her learn to “focus on what’s more important” than modeling or acting ever could. “I think that one thing I love about being a mom is that it takes me outside of myself,” she said in April 2019 of raising her and Brady’s son.
Media Frenzy
In the aftermath of her breakup and giving birth to Jack, Moynahan “barely left” her house. “Having a baby should have been the most joyous time of my life, but instead I felt assaulted,” she wrote in her 2019 book Our Shoes, Our Selves. “It’s unnerving to be followed and stalked like that, especially during such an emotionally vulnerable time. … I became reclusive for a bit. I became wildly private. I shared little and only with a select few.”
As she worked through her split from Brady, Moynahan reached for a pair of black leather Miu Miu motorcycle boots to help “give me back some of the confidence and strength that I had lost.”
‘Shedding’ Her Past
Moynahan realized that she still had plenty of feelings about her breakup to unpack while she was working on Our Shoes, Our Selves. “I feel like this project has kind of shown that to me that I still unconsciously carried that around with me,” she said during an April 2019 Build interview. “And so I’m still working through that and kind of shedding that now.”
A Novel Surprise
While reading the Amity Gaige book Sea Wife, Moynahan was surprised to find her ex’s name in print in one section. She shared a photo of the page, which referenced “the image of Tom Brady shirtless,” via Instagram. “Wait!? What?” she wrote. “Kinda cool, no?”
Getting ‘Comfortable’ With the End
In October 2022 — as rumors continued to swirl about Brady’s marriage to Bündchen — Moynahan shared a cryptic quote with her Instagram followers about getting used to change. “Not everything is meant to be mended,” read the excerpt, which was originally posted by a marriage and family therapist. “Not all relationships are meant to last a lifetime. Sometimes we have to learn to get comfortable with the gifts that are offered through the ruptures and the endings instead of the stories of repair and reconciliation.”
