Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz have been compared to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle online—and the similarities are indeed striking.
David and Victoria Beckham‘s oldest son went nuclear with an 820-word statement posted to his Instagram stories on January 19, with one particularly incendiary passage detailing his mother dancing inappropriately “on him” at his wedding.
In among numerous memes making jokes about that particular accusation were some other posts comparing the family warfare to Prince Harry’s royal rift with Prince William and King Charles III, which had Meghan Markle at its heart.
One example on X showed a still from Harry & Meghan, the Netflix docuseries released by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in 2022 and showed the couple working on their laptops. The post, which was viewed 219,000 times and liked 11,000 times, read: “Harry and Meghan working on Brooklyn Peltz’s IG post.”
Why It Matters
For all the jokes, there really are a significant number of similarities between Brooklyn’s narrative and Harry’s, and the two couples have actually also met at a party hosted by Brian Robbins, who was then chief executive of Paramount, and his wife Tracy.
The Justification for Speaking Out
Among the striking comparison points is how Brooklyn Beckham frames his decision to speak out as a move to overturn the “lies” appearing in the press as source quotes, that he argues originated with his parents.
“Unfortunately,” Brooklyn said in his statement, “my parents and their team have continued to go to the press, leaving me with no choice but to speak for myself and tell the truth about only some of the lies that have been printed.
“Since the moment I started standing up for myself with my family I’ve received endless attacks from my parents, both privately and publicly, that were sent to the press on their orders.”
Prince Harry made similar comments to Anderson Cooper during his appearance on 60 Minutes in January 2023, when he was publicizing his tell-all book Spare: “Every single time I’ve tried to do it privately there have been briefings and leakings and planting of stories against me and my wife. You know, the family motto is never complain, never explain. But it’s just a motto.
“So now, trying to speak a language that perhaps they understand, I will sit here and speak truth to you with the words that come out of my mouth, rather than using someone else, an unnamed source, to feed in lies or a narrative to a tabloid media that literally radicalizes its readers to then potentially cause harm to my family, my wife, my kids.”
Struggle for Control and ‘The Life I Was Born Into’
Brooklyn Beckham wrote: “For my entire life, my parents have controlled narratives in the press about our family. The performative social media posts, family events and inauthentic relationships have been a fixture of the life I was born into.
“Recently, I have seen with my own eyes the lengths that they’ll go through to place countless lies in the media, mostly at the expense of innocent people, to preserve their own facade. But I believe the truth always comes out.”
That is strikingly similar to words Harry and his representatives have repeatedly used, including in comments appealing for the return of his police protection team, which was taken away when he quit Britain and the palace for a new life in America.
Harry told Oprah Winfrey in March 2021: “I never thought that I would have my security removed, because I was born into this position. I inherited the risk. So that was a shock to me. That was what completely changed the whole plan.”
Meanwhile a legal representative said in January 2022: “Prince Harry inherited a security risk at birth, for life. He remains sixth in line to the throne, served two tours of combat duty in Afghanistan, and in recent years his family has been subjected to well-documented neo-Nazi and extremist threats.
“While his role within the Institution has changed, his profile as a member of the Royal Family has not. Nor has the threat to him and his family.”
Meghan Markle, Nicola Peltz and Acceptance
Brooklyn Beckham’s account of hostility toward Nicola also echoes Harry and Meghan’s narrative about Meghan’s rejection within the royal family.
“My parents have been trying endlessly to ruin my relationship since before my wedding, and it hasn’t stopped,” Brooklyn said. “My wife has been consistently disrespected by my family, no matter how hard we’ve tried to come together as one.”
Harry argued with Prince William about Meghan on multiple occasions, including over suggestions she mistreated staff, according to Spare.
“More than once a staff member slumped across their desk and wept,” Harry wrote. “For all this, every bit of it, Willy blamed one person. Meg. He told me so several times, and he got cross when I told him he was out of line. He was just repeating the press narrative, spouting fake stories he’d read or been told.”
During a later argument, William told Harry, of Meghan, “she’s rude. She’s abrasive. She’s alienated half the staff,” according to the book.
Harry wrote: “I told him to step back, take a breath, really ask himself: Wasn’t Meg his sister-in-law? Wouldn’t this institution be toxic for any newcomer?
“Worst-case scenario, if his sister-in-law was having trouble adjusting to a new office, a new family, a new country, a new culture, couldn’t he see his way clear to cutting her some slack? Couldn’t you just be there for her? Help her?”
During the volatile argument, William lost his temper and threw Harry to the floor, where he fell on a dogs’ bowl, the book says.
Blood Family
“The night before our wedding, members of my family told me that Nicola was ‘not blood’ and ‘not family,’” Brooklyn wrote in his statement,
The difference between “blood royals” who are in the line of succession compared to those who marry into the family has obviously been discussed for decades in British public life. However, Harry took the concept particularly literally in his book when describing the relationship between the heir, William, and himself, the “spare.”
“I was the shadow, the support, the Plan B,” he wrote. “I was brought into the world in case something happened to Willy. I was summoned to provide backup, distraction, diversion and, if necessary, a spare part.
“Kidney, perhaps. Blood transfusion. Speck of bone marrow. This was all made explicitly clear to me from the start of life’s journey and regularly reinforced thereafter. I was twenty the first time I heard the story of what Pa allegedly said to Mummy the day of my birth: Wonderful! Now you’ve given me an Heir and a Spare—my work is done. A joke. Presumably.”
The Politics of Access
“My mum has repeatedly invited women from my past into our lives in ways that were clearly intended to make us both uncomfortable,” Brooklyn Beckham wrote.
“Despite this, we still travelled to London for my dad’s birthday and were rejected for a week as we waited in our hotel room trying to plan quality time with him. He refused all of our attempts, unless it was at his big birthday party with a hundred guests and cameras at every corner.
“When he finally agreed to see me, it was under the condition that Nicola wasn’t invited. It was a slap in the face. Later, when my family travelled to LA, they refused to see me at all. My family values public promotion and endorsements above all else. Brand Beckham comes first.”
This account has startling similarities to Harry’s attempts to see Queen Elizabeth II in January 2020, when he was preparing to crash out of the monarchy.
Harry told Winfrey in March 2021: “The moment we landed in the UK, I got a message from my private secretary, Fiona, at the time cutting and pasting a message from the Queen’s private secretary basically saying, ‘please pass along to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex that he cannot come to Norfolk. The Queen is busy. She’s busy all week.'”
“She’d just invited me,” he added, suggesting palace staff intervened to block the meeting.
David Beckham excluding Nicola also has echoes of an argument between Harry and King Charles as Elizabeth was dying at Balmoral, in Scotland, in September 2022, while Harry was in London.
“He said I was welcome at Balmoral, but he didn’t want…her,” Harry wrote. “He started to lay out his reason, which was nonsensical, and disrespectful, and I wasn’t having it. ‘Don’t ever speak about my wife that way.’
“He stammered, apologetic, saying he simply didn’t want a lot of people around. No other wives were coming, Kate wasn’t coming, he said, therefore Meg shouldn’t. ‘Then that’s all you needed to say’.”
The Controlling Wife Narrative
“The narrative that my wife controls me is completely backwards,” Brooklyn Beckham wrote. “I have been controlled by my parents for most of my life. I grew up with overwhelming anxiety.
“For the first time in my life, since stepping away from my family, that anxiety has disappeared. I wake up every morning grateful for the life I chose, and have found peace and relief.
“My wife and I do not want a life shaped by image, press, or manipulation. All we want peace, privacy and happiness for us and our future family.”
Publicly, many critics have suggested Harry is controlled by Meghan, and in fact Robert Jobson reported in his 2023 book Our King how palace staff even joked about this. He quoted a senior figure who said: “Some blame Meghan Markle for the fallout, ignoring the fact that Harry seems to be the driving force in everything that happened.
“There was a point when officials joked Harry was the victim of Stockholm syndrome, and he was Meghan’s hostage, but now most just feel Harry has turned his back on everything he has known.”
Harry’s narrative was more about control via the system of monarchy than by family but he was also clear that Charles, even before becoming king, controlled the purse strings.
He made the point when discussing Charles’ concerns about whether there was enough money to fund Meghan as a working royal: “Pa didn’t financially support Willy and me, and our families, out of any largesse. That was his job.
“That was the whole deal. We agreed to serve the monarch, go wherever we were sent, do whatever we were told, surrender our autonomy, keep our hands and feet inside the gilded cage at all times, and in exchange the keepers of the cage agreed to feed and clothe us.
“Was Pa, with all his millions from the hugely lucrative Duchy of Cornwall [a royal property portfolio], trying to say that our captivity was starting to cost him a bit too much?”
Needless to say, despite the many similarities in the two experiences, all accounts so far point to Harry and Meghan’s wedding dance having been a success.
Brooklyn Beckham wrote: “My mum hijacked my first dance with my wife, which had been planned weeks in advance to a romantic love song.
“In front of our 500 wedding guests, Marc Anthony called me to the stage, where in the schedule was planned to be my romantic dance with my wife but instead my mum was waiting to dance with me instead. She danced very inappropriately on me in front of everyone.”
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