Gisele Bündchen and Tom Brady’s divorce was a bit of a slow burn but the post- divorce friction has been minimal. 

 

They have played nice on social media, seemingly co-parent well, and there’s been very little focus on the monetary split or their disastrous investment in FTX. He’s moved on (most publicly with Irina Shayk), and Gisele has been spotted with her martial arts instructor and long-time friend, Joaquim Valente. Plus, there was the Vanity Fair interview in the tradition of women like Jennifer Garner and Jennifer Aniston after their respective divorces. 

 

Lainey sent me this preview clip of Gisele’s upcoming interview with Robin Roberts for IMPACT x Nightline: Gisele Bündchen: Climbing the Mountain (that’s’ a mouthful!). It’s a dramatic teaser and edited to look like she talks about issues with Tom and is upset.

 

While she is emotional, I find it very hard to believe Gisele will speak about her children in detail or say anything negative about Tom. It has not been in her MO, ever, to be negative about people (Leonardo DiCaprio, other supermodels, Bostonians). She’s all about the earthy, meditation, positive vibes. (Also, her mother recently passed and that leaves most people quite raw and is a much more likely explanation for the emotion.)

 

But there’s a special to sell and of course they will go for the most enticing clip. That’s expected. What’s unexpected here goes back to the medium: why is Gisele doing a TV interview? She doesn’t need to make a “comeback” because that implies there was a time people didn’t want her. That has never happened. She stepped away because she wanted to and could walk any runway at any fashion week, any time. 

When it comes to self-promotion for things like her books (one cookbook, one journal-like book of essays), she would occasionally drop in for a talk show segment that is host-heavy (like Ellen or Jimmy Fallon). Few and far between, and nothing serious. That’s why this sit-down feels different. Robin Roberts is a proper journalist and when you sit down with her, there’s an expectation that there will be difficult or probing questions. 

Why, at this point, is Gisele inviting this kind of scrutiny for herself and her family (the headlines about co-parenting are already floating around) when she doesn’t need it? More than that, why is she taking on a sit-down interview? She has never struck me as someone who cares about relating to an audience, so that raises another question: who is she trying to reach with this? Gisele is breaking her own silence. She wants to tell us something. It could be a freeing of her soul or it could be a new skin care line.