What the New Tom Brady Book Says About Gisele Bündchen and Their Split

• Brady: An American Story and the Price of Greatness, by former Sports Illustrated writer Lars Anderson, comes out Tuesday, Sept. 29, from Celadon Books.
• It says Gisele Bündchen wrote Tom Brady a handwritten letter in 2018 asking for “more of his time, more of his attention, more of his heart.”
• Anderson didn’t have access to either of them. Bündchen has called the ultimatum stories “very hurtful” and said she wants Brady “to achieve and to conquer.”

The Tom Brady book is really a book about his marriage. Brady: An American Story and the Price of Greatness, a biography by Lars Anderson, comes out Tuesday, Sept. 29, and the passages released ahead of it center on how Tom Brady, 49, and Gisele Bündchen, 46, came apart.

The biggest claims: a letter Bündchen wrote him after the 2018 Super Bowl, and three words that, the book says, ended the marriage four years later. Here’s what Anderson reports, how he reported it, and what Bündchen has said on the record.

What does the new Tom Brady book say about Gisele?

It opens on their first date, in December 2006, at Turks & Frogs, a wine bar in Manhattan’s West Village. Victoria’s Secret marketing chief Ed Razek set it up, according to the book, telling Brady he had a “girl version” of him and telling Bündchen he had a “boy version” of her.

They married in a small ceremony in Santa Monica in February 2009 and renewed their vows in Costa Rica two months later. In Anderson’s telling, Bündchen gave him “protection stones” and altars for his locker, and told him, “You’re lucky you married a witch.”

The book’s thesis is on its cover, “the price of greatness.” Celadon’s description says Brady’s obsession with football shaped every choice, including “how he viewed his role as a father and husband.”

What was in Gisele’s 2018 letter to Tom Brady?

According to the book, Bündchen wrote it weeks after the Patriots lost Super Bowl LII to the Philadelphia Eagles, 41-33, on Feb. 4, 2018. “She explained that their marriage wasn’t working. She needed more of him, more of his time, more of his attention, more of his heart,” Anderson writes.

She wanted him “to be present when he was at home,” the book says, not “responding to text messages on his constantly buzzing cell phone or replaying a game in his mind.”

She also asked for more help with the kids, the chance to sleep in a few days a week and more time for her own career.

He’d pull it out on contemplative nights and reread every word.

Lars Anderson, Brady, on what Brady did with the letter

He kept playing for five more seasons. Brady retired on Feb. 1, 2022, came back 40 days later, and the couple finalized their divorce on Oct. 28 that year.

The book says Bündchen ended it with three words, “We’re not compatible,” citing a person close to Brady, and writes: “And just like that, she was done.”

Neither Brady nor Bündchen has confirmed that conversation or the letter.

Did Tom Brady or Gisele Bündchen talk to the author?

No. Anderson, a New York Times best-selling author, didn’t have access to the couple. The publisher says the book is built on more than 350 original interviews with people who knew Brady on and off the field, from his San Mateo, California, childhood to his Tampa Bay finish.

That’s how an unauthorized biography works: neither subject gets to approve or block it.

Brady’s and Bündchen’s words in it come from what they’ve said in public, like the line from Brady’s 2018 docuseries Tom vs. Time that Anderson uses: “If you compete against me, you better be willing to give up your life, because I’m giving up mine.”

It’s also not a memoir. Brady’s own book, The TB12 Method, came out in 2017.

What has Gisele Bündchen said about the divorce?

That it wasn’t an ultimatum. The reports that she made Brady choose between football and the marriage were “very hurtful,” she told Vanity Fair in March 2023. “When you love someone, you don’t put them in a jail and say, ‘You have to live this life.'”

She called the split “the death of my dream.” “If there’s one person I want to be the happiest in the world, it’s him, believe me,” she said. When they announced the divorce, Brady wrote that they had reached the decision “amicably and with gratitude for the time we spent together.”

Six months later, she teared up talking about it with CBS Sunday Morning at her home in Costa Rica. “My parents have been married for 50 years, and I really wanted that to happen,” she said, adding that sometimes people “grow together” and sometimes “grow apart.” The interview is below.

The couple share two children, Benjamin, 16, and Vivian, 13. Brady also has a son, Jack, 19, with actress Bridget Moynahan. Brady is out Sept. 29 in hardcover, e-book and audio.

More athletes and their partners: Justin Verlander’s wife, Kate Upton, planned his final mound visit, and Brittany Mahomes apologized for “a lot of bad words” at a Chiefs game. And here’s Travis Kelce’s joke about Taylor Swift’s Emmys gift. More in Celebrities.

— Bruno Monteiro

Sources: Lars Anderson, Brady: An American Story and the Price of Greatness (Celadon Books, Sept. 29, 2026), and Celadon’s book page; excerpts published by the Daily Mail and reported by Yahoo Entertainment’s Vanessa Serna and Yahoo Style’s Larry Stansbury (Sept. 26, 2026); The New Yorker, “Tom Brady’s Endgame” by Jennifer Wilson (Sept. 21, 2026); Vanity Fair (March 2023); CBS Sunday Morning (September 2023); Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen’s divorce statements (Oct. 28, 2022); FOX Sports on X (September 2026).