Brooklyn Beckham insists his relationship with his famous parents broke down before his lavish 2022 wedding.
But it has now emerged that two years later he was still happily staying in their £31million London home and ‘loved hanging out’ with his family.
In an extraordinary Instagram statement this week, the 26-year-old wannabe photographer and food influencer accused his parents, David and Victoria Beckham, of ‘controlling narratives,’ sabotaging his marriage and attempting to pressure him into signing away the rights to his name in the run-up to his nuptials with Nicola Peltz.
But an interview he gave to The Times in 2024 – two years after the wedding he now claims marked the collapse of family relations – paints a markedly different picture.
At the time, Brooklyn spoke fondly of his parents, siblings and trips home to the UK, telling journalist Julia Llewellyn Smith that when he visited London it was ‘about hangin’ out with my family.’
Llewellyn Smith said there ‘seemed no doubt that he was close to his parents and siblings.’
Llewellyn Smith said there ‘seemed no doubt that he was close to his parents and siblings’
David and Victoria Beckham ‘have fears their son Brooklyn will be left with nothing’ after he allegedly signed a rigid pre-nuptial agreement before he wed Nicola Peltz
Brooklyn even revealed that he still had his own bedroom at his parents’ six-bedroom Holland Park townhouse – purchased in 2013 and estimated to be worth £31million.
‘I really love London, I go back as much as I can,’ he said.
And when asked to choose between Miami – the base of the billionaire Peltz family – and the Cotswolds, where the Beckhams have a country home, he firmly replied: ‘Cotswolds.’
The comments sit uneasily alongside his claim this week that his parents had been trying ‘endlessly’ to ‘ruin’ his relationship since before his wedding, and that he had been ‘controlled’ by his parents for most of his life.
During the 2024 interview, Brooklyn also spoke at length about cooking with his father, recalling how Sir David, 50, taught him to make spaghetti bolognese and that he ‘loved hanging out with him in the kitchen.’
‘It’s my wife’s favourite thing that I cook,’ he said. ‘It means a lot to me just because my dad taught me how to make it when he was playing for AC Milan.’
He added that when with his brothers, Romeo, 23, and Cruz, 20, they ‘always cook together.’
‘We never say it’s like a competition, even though we give each other a bit of stick about it that’s just what brothers do,’ he said. ‘All of us in the kitchen. Just listening to music, cooking together, it’s fun.’
The ratio of mentions of his family to his wife, Llewellyn Smith noted, was about five to one.
Nicola’s businessman and investor father Nelson Peltz, 83, is said to be worth an astonishing £1.2 billion (pictured with Nicola’s mother Claudia and dad Nelson)
Brooklyn’s choice to sign the pre-nup in 2022 means he will not gain any of the Peltz’s billionaire family fortune if he and Nicola were to split
It comes after Brooklyn shared six stinging posts to Instagram on Monday night in which he said he did not want to reconcile with his family following a feud which saw him miss his father’s milestone 50th birthday and knighthood earlier this year.
Sources told the Daily Mail that Victoria, 51, was left ‘devastated’ after taking the brunt of the vicious family fallout with her eldest son, Brooklyn, and his wife, Nicola, 31.
Despite once declaring he was a ‘mama’s boy,’ Brooklyn focused mainly on Victoria in his lengthy statement, with insiders saying the vitriol left her ‘on the floor in pieces’.
He claimed that Victoria cancelled making Nicola’s wedding dress ‘at the eleventh hour,’ that his parents pressured him to sign away rights to his name, and that his mother ‘hijacked’ his first dance with his new bride, dancing ‘inappropriately’ on him in front of 500 guests.
DJ Tony, the man who watched Brooklyn’s lavish 2022 nuptials unfold from behind the decks has since stepped forward to clear Victoria’s name.
It was, he said, not Victoria who ‘hijacked’ Brooklyn’s first dance – but Latin superstar Marc Anthony, 57, who summoned mother and son onto the stage and instructed Brooklyn to place his hands on his mother’s hips.
Speaking on ITV’s This Morning on Friday, the longtime friend of the Beckham family said: ‘There was no slut-dropping, there was no PVC cat suits, no Spice Girl action.
‘Victoria was thrown into that situation, and I think too much has been read into it.’
He added: ‘I’ve done an awful lot of Beckham parties in the past, and they are a very dancing, close-knit family and love to dance.’
The DJ, whose real name is Tony Marnoch, told hosts Dermot O’Leary and Alison Hammond that Mr Anthony was performing when he first called Brooklyn onto the stage – just as guests were expecting his romantic first dance with his bride Nicola Peltz, 31.
He said: ‘Then Marc asked for the most beautiful woman in the room to come to the stage – and then he said “Victoria, come to the stage”.’
The 60-year-old revealed that Brooklyn looked ‘devastated’ at the fact his first dance was with Victoria and not his wife, and that Nicola left the room ‘crying her eyes out.’
‘The whole situation was really awkward for everyone in the room,’ he added.
Meanwhile, Sir David, 50, was heckled on Tuesday as he faced the media at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
When asked about the feud, he declined to answer any direct questions but he later spoke on the perils and virtues of children using social media.
In an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, he said that he has tried to ‘educate’ his own children about the dangers of social media apps while also showing them how they can work for ‘good.’