A new biography of Aaron Rodgers aims to shed light on one of the many puzzling questions surrounding the controversial NFL quarterback: What led to his decade-long estrangement from his Chico-based parents?
According to the new book, “Out of the Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers,” the quarterback’s parents, Ed and Darla Rodgers, cut ties with their superstar son because they had a falling out with his former Hollywood star girlfriend, Olivia Munn, the Daily Mail reported.
Darla Rodgers, a devout Christian, was mortified to learn that Munn and her son, who dated from 2014 to 2017, had premarital sex, sportswriter Ian O’Connor explained in his new book, according to the Daily Mail. Rodgers was particularly devastated after hearing that the “Predator” and “The Newsroom” star had chatted in an interview about their sexual practices, while Munn explained that she and the Green Bay Packers quarterback don’t have sex on game days.
“Given her devout religious beliefs, Aaron’s mother disapproved of premarital sex and objected to her middle child sharing a hotel room with his girlfriend, even as an NFL player,” wrote O’Connor, an author and sports columnist for the New York Post.
“Darla didn’t appreciate the way Munn joked about oral sex in an interview or the way she spoke publicly about her sex life with Aaron just before that loss in Buffalo,” O’Connor also wrote.
The Daily Mail said the interview in question appeared to be Munn speaking to Andy Cohen on his show “Watch What Happens Live” in December 2014. Cohen had asked Munn if she and Rodgers had sex on game days.
Munn replied: “No, not on game days. There’s no rule, but it doesn’t happen because there are other things to focus on.”
However, Munn said they sometimes have sex after a Packers game, the Daily Mail reported. “It depends on what time the game is,” she said. “I try to have sex as much as possible.”
A source told O’Connor that Munn “was saying all that (insults) and it pissed Darla off, really pissed her off.”
According to O’Connor, Ed and Darla Rodgers also objected to another interview Munn gave with Cohen, in which she claimed she had tried to encourage her boyfriend to repair his relationship with his parents. According to O’Connor, Ed Rodgers said, “That’s a lie.”
Tensions also escalated after Munn allegedly told Rodgers she didn’t want them to see her parents after a game in Tampa, even though her parents were traveling to Florida to go to Disney World, according to O’Connor’s book.
Upon hearing this, Ed and Darla Rodgers said they had been attending their son’s games since he was a child and did not need Munn’s permission to continue, according to the book. Ed Rodgers reportedly told Munn, “You haven’t been around very long. You’re just his girlfriend. We’re his parents.”
The parents were later dismayed when they never received a phone call from their son apologizing for his girlfriend’s actions, according to the book. They began to believe that Munn was the “primary culprit in the family’s division.”
But Rodgers dismissed his parents’ views of Munn, saying in O’Connor’s book that she had “nothing to do” with the tensions between them. He also questioned his parents’ reasons for talking about their separation, saying: “They can’t say anything but make up stories, but look at the facts.”
Rodgers’ feud with his family became public in the spring of 2016, thanks to Aaron’s brother Jordan Rodgers, while he was a contestant on “The Bachelorette.” While courting JoJo Fletcher, Jordan Rodgers revealed that he was close with his older brother Luke, but that Aaron Rodgers was estranged from the rest of the family.
An extensive 2022 profile of Rodgers by ESPN echoes some of the points made in O’Connor’s book about family breakdown. The ESPN article notes that Rodgers began to drift away from what he considered “his family’s dogmatic religious views” while attending and playing football at Butte Community College before transferring to UC Berkeley to play for the Golden Bears.
But there have also been reports that Rodgers began to distance himself from his family after leading the Packers to a Super Bowl victory in 2011. Some reports have stated that Jordan Rodgers and the rest of the family were jealous of Aaron’s fame and success in the NFL.
O’Connor’s book also reports that Rodgers felt that his generosity to his parents was “taken for granted,” an idea that Munn reinforced, apparently telling her boyfriend that he should not let his family “chase fame and fortune through him.”
According to the book, Rodgers never reconnected with her parents, even after her split from Munn in 2017. She later began a relationship with comedian John Mulaney, with whom she welcomed a son, Malcolm, in 2021. Munn and Mulaney married last month, after the actor went public with the news that she had endured a harrowing year of surgery and treatment for breast cancer.
Rodgers’ personal and professional life has also been tumultuous in recent years. He dated retired race car driver Danica Patrick from 2018 to 2020, but broke up during the COVID-19 lockdown and secretly got engaged to Shailene Woodley, which the “Divergent” actor revealed in a 2021 interview with Jimmy Fallon.
However, Rodgers and Woodley ended their engagement the following year, even though the quarterback went on to win back-to-back NFL MVP awards. The quarterback also became a controversial figure in American culture, accused of being a “nutcase” and a “narcissistic diva” for pushing conspiracy theories and controversial views on COVID-19 vaccines. He also left the Green Pay Packers in 2023 to play for the New York Jets, but was sidelined for the entire season after suffering a ruptured Achilles tendon in the first game.
