Aaron Rodgers Is ‘a Very Difficult Person to Understand,’ Netflix Docuseries Makers Concluded (Exclusive)

PEOPLE spoke with the directors behind Netflix's new docuseries 'Aaron Rodgers: Enigma,' which began streaming Tuesday

After spending a year filming and interviewing Aaron Rodgers, the documentarians behind his new Netflix docuseries concluded that he’s just what their title suggests: an enigma.

Gotham Chopra and Liam Hughes, the co-directors behind Netflix’s new three-part Aaron Rodgers: Enigma docuseries spoke with PEOPLE this week about their experience spending time with the four-time NFL MVP and documenting his recovery from a ruptured Achilles tendon, suffered on the fourth play of the 2023 season.

“I think we probably know him better than most with all the time we've spent with him and all the interviews, but if you ask me, like, do I really know Aaron? I wouldn't say I would. I don't think so,” Chopra tells PEOPLE. “I mean, not to get too esoteric, but does Aaron fully know himself? I don't think he would say yes. I think it's one of the things that distinguishes him from a lot of other athletes and people. He's still very much on a journey.”

PEOPLE had an advanced look at the episodes, which also explores the 41-year-old quarterback’s career and controversies off the field. The series began streaming on Tuesday, Dec. 17.

Related: Aaron Rodgers Says He 'Was Never Asked’ to Join Infamous 2016 Bachelorette Dinner Where Family Rift Was Revealed

Chopra recruited Hughes, his frequent collaborator, to join him on the year-long project after retired seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady — whom Chopra documented for ESPN’s Man In the Arena: Tom Brady series — put him in contact with Rodgers.

Hughes called the project a “no brainer” for them, given Rodgers’ status as one of the best quarterbacks of all time coupled with his celebrity and eccentric personality off the field. Despite preconceived notions through what they’ve read or had seen about Rodgers in the past, Hughes and Chopra vowed to approach the project “with an open heart and a curious mind.”

“I think for me, the interesting thing was I was just so surprised early on when I met Aaron and started to spend time with him, like some of those preconceived notions I had, most of them were kind of blown up pretty quickly for me,” Hughes tells PEOPLE. “I think that made it easier to approach him with an open heart and a curious mind, because I was like, ‘Wait a second, this isn't really the guy that I've come to know through the media,’ if you will. Now that I'm coming to know him in person with an actual human connection, I was just very surprised, and I think that made it pretty easy, in some ways, to put all those preconceived notions aside and just really dig in and be curious and try to understand him, because he's a very difficult person to understand.”

Related: Aaron Rodgers Says He Doesn't Have 'Ill Will' Towards His Family and Is Open to a 'Reconciliation'

Chopra says Rodgers was immediately “really trusting” with him and Hughes, adding that throughout their year working together on the documentary, Rodgers “was very open and vulnerable.”

In the series, Rodgers arguably opens up more than ever before about his highly publicized rift with his immediate family, his spirituality and religious beliefs and his embattled relationship with fame. The New York Jets star also opens up about his at-times controversial social, political and scientific beliefs, as he continues to make misleading comments about vaccines in the series and in one memorable scene meets with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who later asks him to be his running mate in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

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"Aaron has been very consistent about the fact that there are certain things in his private life that he doesn't want to discuss publicly,” Chopra says, noting that Rodgers did, to an extent, “open up quite a lot about some of those topics — his family maybe being the most prominent.”

“Once he was in [on the documentary], he was in,” Chopra adds. “And he was open and vulnerable.”

All episodes of Aaron Rodgers: Engima are now streaming on Netflix.