Tom Brady's 'Living With Yourself' Cameo Isn't Meant to Shade Patriots Owner

It's not New England Patriot Tom Brady's first cameo — after all, the quarterback has previously appeared in Stuck on You and Entourage — but he's never gotten as much heat as he is now. 

The football player appears for a few seconds in a cameo for Paul Rudd's newest Netflix series, Living With Yourself. But the brief moments on screen have many viewers up in arms, and the athlete himself irate with how wildly "out of context" people are taking it. Keep reading for everything you need to know about Tom Brady's Living With Yourself cameo controversy.

"You want to try to use something and use it out of context. Is that what you choose to do in the media?" an irate Tom Brady asks ABC's Good Morning America reporters who are pressing him in the locker room.

The pilot episode of Paul Rudd's latest television venture with Netflix shows the quarterback walking out of a strip mall spa and taking a relaxed breath. While the appearance lasts barely over a few seconds, Tom Brady has been spending a great chunk of time trying to control the damage.

That's because many viewers perceive there to be striking similarities between Tom Brady's scene and a recent scandal involving New England Patriot owner Robert Kraft, who was charged with soliciting prostitution at a strip mall spa. 

The real spa Kraft frequented bares a nearly uncanny resemblance to the one portrayed in the Netflix series, viewers say. But Tom Brady for his part denies that the scene had anything to do with the owner of his football team.

"It's not what that was about," he continued to ABC. "I think that was taken out of context. Just like you're taking it out of context and trying to make it a story," he adds angrily. 

In the context of the series, the spa is actually a place where customers can clone themselves into better versions of themselves — hence the idea to get such an excellent sports star to prove the spa is worth the cost to protagonist Paul Rudd.

"We were talking about why Miles would do this, why would he agree to hand over $50,000," Living With Yourself creator Timothy Greenberg said in an interview with Refinery29. "[Charlie Kaufman, who Timothy consulted in early stages of writing] had the idea, 'Maybe he sees these sports stars on the wall'" — and the rest is history.

Plus, in fairness to Tom, his scene was shot on a green screen, so the sports star had no idea what it would look like once it aired — much less that it would be taken as a critique on the Patriots owner. 

"When I wrote the script," Timothy continues, "I was like, 'Here's a guy that seems ageless and he's still performing so well because he's 37 years old and he just won his fourth Super Bowl.'"

"Four years later, the guy is now 41 and he's won six Super Bowls," he added. "He just won another Super Bowl! Maybe he did it. Maybe he really is a clone," Timothy jokes. And what a compelling clone he is.

Living With Yourself is now streaming its entire first season on Netflix.