Tom Brady: Janet Jackson Halftime Incident Was ‘Probably Good For NFL’
On a new episode of his Let’s Go! podcast with Larry Fitzgerald and Jim Gray, Tom Brady expressed his thoughts on the 2004 Super Bowl Halftime performance where Janet Jackson suffered a wardrobe malfunction and part of her breast was exposed by Justin Timberlake. The pair were performing “Rock Your Body.” The seven-time Super Bowl champ said it was “probably a good thing for the NFL.”
“I didn’t see much. I’d much rather not see it when I’m playing,” Brady said about Super Bowl halftime shows. “Even I remember when we beat Carolina…We came off the field and that was when we had the wardrobe malfunction with Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson. [The media was] asking me about that. I couldn’t even understand what they were telling me about. They said, ‘Did you see the halftime show?’ and I said, ‘I didn’t see anything.’ I was thinking about the game.”
“It took a while for us to figure out exactly what had gone on,” Brady continued. “I think in the end, it was probably a good thing for the NFL because everyone got to talk about it, and it was just more publicity and more publicity for halftime shows. Is any publicity bad publicity? That’s what they say, so, who knows?”
Jackson spoke about the incident during her self-titled 2022 Lifetime documentary.
“We talked once and Justin said, ‘I don’t know if I should speak up and make a statement.’ And then I was like, ‘Look, I don’t want any drama for you. If I were you, I wouldn’t say anything,'” Jackson said. “Justin and I are very good friends and we always will be. We talked a few days ago. He and I have moved on and it’s time for everyone to do the same.”
Timberlake apologized to both Jackson and his ex-girlfriend popstar Britney Spears for the role he played in the descending of their careers at the time.
“I understand that I fell short in these moments and in many others and benefited from a system that condones misogyny and racism,” he wrote in a February post to Instagram. “I specifically want to apologize to Britney Spears and Janet Jackson both individually because I care for and respect these women and I know I failed.”
