It wasn’t long ago that Aaron Rodgers was among the NFL’s most beloved stars.
One of the most gifted quarterbacks to ever play, Rodgers achieved another level of celebrity off the field. He was a ubiquitous spokesman for State Farm and an acclaimed guest host of Jeopardy!, performing so well in the latter role that he was considered as a possible successor for the late Alex Trebek. Politically, Rodgers was seen as a thoughtful progressive. He called out the NFL for blackballing Colin Kaepernick and expressed support for players who kneeled during the national anthem, even if he didn’t himself.
But as he enters his 20th season in the NFL, now playing for the Jets, Rodgers invites a different description. He is, as Ian O’Connor writes in a new biography, “the most compelling and polarizing figure in professional football, hands down,” a distinction that Rodgers, the author says, has had “for years.”
Well, for nearly the last three years, at least. In Out of the Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers, O’Connor zeroes in on August 26, 2021, as the start of Rodgers’s metamorphosis. That was when, after being asked by a reporter if he had been vaccinated against COVID-19, Rodgers said he had been “immunized.” The response, O’Connor observes, “ultimately changed the way he was perceived by an untold number of people.” Rodgers tested positive for COVID-19 less than three months later, making his previous comments look more than a little misleading. But the ensuing backlash did little to chasten him. In the years that followed, Rodgers spoke skeptically (as well as gratuitously) about the COVID vaccine and also peddled various conspiracy theories. By the end of the 2022 season, State Farm quietly ended its 12-year partnership with Rodgers, completing his transformation from marketable star to public contrarian.
A biographer of sporting icons including Bill Belichick, Mike Krzyzewski, and Derek Jeter, O’Connor uses his new book to chart Rodgers’s evolution in the court of public opinion, as well as his stormy familial history. Rodgers severed ties with his parents, brothers, and other family members about a decade ago, leaving them all mystified by the estrangement. O’Connor wades through various theories for the falling-out: Rodgers’s parents blame his ex-girlfriend Olivia Munn; others attribute the shunning to the family’s devout Christian beliefs; and some point to his brothers’ exploitation of his fame. Out of the Darkness can only illuminate so much of the Rodgers family drama, despite the author’s rich reportage. O’Connor conducted 250 interviews for the book, which included extensive conversations with Rodgers’s parents, Ed and Darla, and some face time with Rodgers himself. As a result, O’Connor was able to unearth new insights, such as Rodgers’s admission that he should have told the truth about his vaccination status and details about an emotional encounter between father and son at a celebrity golf tournament last summer, which raised new hopes for a reconciliation.
I spoke to O’Connor about all of that over the phone last week. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Vanity Fair: This is an unauthorized biography, but you did manage to sit down with Rodgers at his home in Malibu earlier this year, which you detailed in the book’s prologue. What was that conversation like, and how difficult was it to get him to agree to talk to you?