Joe Faraoni / ESPN Images(NEW YORK) — New England Patriots star Tom Brady threw a flag on an off-field play that he said misrepresented team owner Robert Kraft.
The Patriots quarterback said his recent cameo appearance in Living With Yourself, a new Netflix comedy series, was “taken out of context.”
According to ESPN, the scene shows Brady walking out of the “Top Happy Spa,” which is located inside a strip mall, and asking Paul Rudd’s character if it’s his “first time” there.
“Uh-huh,” Rudd responded. “You?”
“Sixth,” Brady said with a smile, in a reference to his six Super Bowl championships.
Many viewers thought the scene, which director Timothy Greenberg told Refinery29 he wrote years ago, was a reference to Patriots owner Kraft’s arrest for solicitation of prostitution at a Florida massage parlor in February. Brady strongly pushed back against that assessment.
“That’s not what that was about,” Brady, 42, told reporters inside the Patriots locker room on Saturday.
“The blame and shame media atmosphere that’s percolated for a while, I think that was taken out of context, just like you’re taking it out of context and trying to make it a story for yourself, which has a negative connotation to it, which I don’t appreciate,” Brady further said. “It was meant to be something different than that. The fact it’s a distraction or you’re bringing it up is not something I want to be talking about.”
The star quarterback also said he did not know what the final scene would look like because it was shot in front of a green screen.
Living With Yourself director Greenberg admitted to Refinery29 that after Kraft’s arrest, he thought, “‘Alright, this is clearly not going to happen now.'”
But Brady honored his commitment to the show.
“It’s unfortunate that people would choose to think I would ever do something like that about Mr. Kraft,” Brady added. “I think that’s a very bad assessment of my relationship with him. I would never do that.”
“I think everybody knows what our relationship is about. For 20 years, it’s nothing but love and respect,” Brady said. “I’ve been through a lot of tough things with him. I love him dearly. I sympathize with a lot of things that he’s gone through in his life. I empathize with a lot of people that get taken advantage of and get used and understand that’s part of what we’re living in.”
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