“I do not want to reconcile with my family. I’m not being controlled, I’m standing up for myself for the first time in my life.”
These are the words of Brooklyn Beckham, eldest son of David and Victoria, who on Monday evening delivered a lengthy statement on Instagram across six story posts — a series of highly personal accusations regarding his relationship with his family, their family dynamic and his parents’ behaviour towards him and his wife, Nicola Peltz.
This is the latest salvo in an enduring feud, but the venom of the attack has propelled it to the top of the news in a country where the newly knighted Sir David and his family are celebrities with a difference — friends of the King, a family brand who have styled themselves as the nation’s most relatable celebrity clan. Within hours Brooklyn’s media attack was a lead story on News at Ten and the contents of his statement were being exchanged across X accounts worldwide.
• Brooklyn Beckham: Victoria hijacked first dance at my wedding
Romeo, Brooklyn, Cruz, Harper and David Beckham with Anna Wintour at Victoria Beckham’s show during London Fashion Week in 2019
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It leaps out at you in no particular order — each accusation devastating in its own way: Victoria Beckham humiliated her son at his wedding by gate-crashing his first dance with his bride and dancing “inappropriately”. Brooklyn says: “For my entire life, my parents have controlled narratives in the press about our family.” He complains of the pressure to turn up for the brand. He says that on the night before his wedding members of his family reminded him that his wife-to-be was “not blood” and that he was, in a scene like something out of Succession, repeatedly pressured into “signing away the rights to my name”. “The narrative that my wife controls me is completely backwards. I have been controlled by my parents for most of my life… My parents have been trying endlessly to ruin my relationship since before my wedding, and it hasn’t stopped,” he wrote.
Mia Regan, Romeo, Cruz, Harper, David, Victoria, Brooklyn and Nicola Peltz at the UK premiere of the Netflix documentary Beckham in 2023
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It’s hard to know which of them are the most damaging or which parties will suffer the most, but everyone has an opinion, whether it’s “why are these people taking up the news?” or, if you’re the parent of an anxious child, “there but for the grace of God”.
Few of us come from a family whose Instagrams will make headline news across the world, but hardly any families brought up in the social media age have escaped their parents’ Facebook pages and their lives being shared among their friends and contacts. This is a story that resonates with sons and parents, brothers and wives — it’s about what love and support means to different individuals, it’s about nepo babies and families with two very different agendas. But it’s also about a young man whose version of reality is not the same as his parents’, and parents who cannot believe that all their love and hard work has turned to ashes. And that is a story that’s as old as families.
These are the accusations from the Instagram postings on Monday that will stick with us for some time:
The fake family one
“The performative social media posts, family events and inauthentic relationships have been a fixture of the life I was born into.”
This one will really hurt because it confirms all our least generous suspicions. We know that when David pops his head around the door during VB’s documentary to remind her that she was driven to school in a Rolls-Royce, so she’s not actually working class, it is totally scripted and we know that the family pictures for one birthday or another are part of a carefully choreographed Beckham imageathon. But we also like to assume this is all a bit of a giggle, harmless money-spinning, and they are probably supporting all sorts of charities in the background. But Brooklyn makes it sound soulless and cynical. This one we have sympathy for.
Romeo, Cruz, Harper and their parents in the Cotswolds during David’s 50th birthday celebrations
On the other hand, what seems to have happened is Brooklyn has sought to right this by seeing them only on his own terms. He writes about travelling to London for his dad’s birthday (David’s 50th, when Brooklyn and Nicola were not present at any of the celebrations) and being “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.”
• Brooklyn Beckham ‘told David and Victoria to only contact him via lawyers’
This is not a camera-shy couple. What we are seeing here is an attempt to divide and rule on Brooklyn’s part. We’ll meet you but not Mum. We’ll meet you here but we won’t go to the party. Brooklyn says: “When he finally agreed to see me it was under the condition that Nicola wasn’t invited.” Yes, we see. He wasn’t really rejected. He was trying to do something that David could not agree to even had he wanted to: leave Victoria in the cold.
The wedding dance hijacking
According to Brooklyn, “My mum hijacked my first dance with my wife.” Tellingly he chooses this detail — this most crushing of revelations if indeed it is true — not “my mum wanted to have more say in the day” (a familiar criticism of mothers at weddings). He adds that she “danced very inappropriately on me in front of everyone. I’ve never felt more uncomfortable or humiliated in my entire life.”
This is truly shocking because of the tone and the lack of affection, and it is sad because it exposes a weird balance of power. A young man at his own wedding who can’t corral his mother with the aid of a dad or a brother, someone who is so unsure of himself on (certainly he would say) the most important day of his life, terrified of looking foolish.
It also has us wondering what is inappropriate dancing when you are the mother of the groom? The gifs of so-called inappropriate dancing are in full flood on social media. So far my favourites are a crazed couple doing the lindy hop under the influence before crashing to the floor, some serious twerking and John Cleese goosestepping in a knotted hanky. But it is worth pointing out that in the breathy, no-details-spared account of the wedding in US Vogue in April 2022 it was noted that the newlyweds had their first dance to Only Fools Rush In performed by the “rising South African artist Lloyiso”. Afterwards, “friends… then joined the young couple on the dance floor… and Marc Anthony took over the DJ decks.” Brooklyn says he was called to the dance floor by Marc Antony for a “scheduled” romantic dance with his wife but Victoria decided to step in and ruin the moment, which does not quite tally. No mention of VB punching the air and hitching up her slip dress while balancing a margarita on her forehead.
Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz on Instagram
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The one that’s got us worried about Brooklyn (if we weren’t already)
“I grew up with overwhelming anxiety. For the first time in my life, since stepping away from my family, that anxiety has disappeared.”
Looking at past pictures of Brooklyn with and without his family, he has a gentle, almost soppy look about him and, if you look closer, his parents are often forming a protective cordon around him. He enjoys having his picture taken when he is not just one in a long Sound of Music line, all of them wearing co-ordinated outfits, but his parents look troubled. Worried for him. They look as if they know Brooklyn is soft and vulnerable, and now Brooklyn himself has admitted he has anxiety issues but blames the Beckham circus for exacerbating that.
• Beckhams’ Christmas snaps are full of cheer, but no Brooklyn
Could they have done more to protect him? Should the Beckhams have let Brooklyn dip out more? Did they accidentally control their beloved son to a degree that left him feeling helpless and ultimately resentful?
Victoria and Brooklyn Beckham in New York in 2008
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The ouch Victoria one (another one)
“My mum has repeatedly invited women from my past into our lives in ways that were clearly intended to make us both uncomfortable.”
Oh Lord. This one may have something to do with a woman he once dated/knew dating one of his brothers, but we have lost the will to care. Brooklyn has a jealous wife is our takeaway here. And how much he blames his mother. David features in the tirade once or twice, his brothers a little, but Victoria is the controlling one, the snake. The one who called him “evil” for not seating her at the top table at their wedding. Was that a joke?
The one that recalls the worldwide privacy tour in South Park (when Meghan and Harry’s protestations of wanting a quiet private life were lampooned by the satirical show with pictures of them holding placards saying ‘Stop looking at us!’)
“My wife and I do not want a life shaped by image, press, or manipulation,” Brooklyn says. This one is hard to take from a couple who post YouTube videos of their daily outfit changes while talking us through their choices and who are photographed just as often as the Beckhams — always on a red carpet supporting or endorsing or otherwise showing up in their capacity as famous faces who are where they are because of their parents’ money. No one is saying that isn’t an uncomfortable place for a young man to be, but “image” and “press” are certainly a big part of it.
The one about the animal sanctuary
“The one time my wife asked for my mum’s support to save displaced dogs during the LA fires, my mum refused.”
Nicola Peltz and her French bulldog Frankie
INSTAGRAM / NICOLA PELTZ
This did have us hooting, because of all the examples you might have come up with of showing your wife disrespect, Victoria declining to get involved with homeless dogs in Los Angeles is a pretty funny one. Somehow it feels like in Peltz-Beckham world every no, or maybe, or not-just-now is like a knife to the heart of the child who isn’t used to hearing it.
The wedding that will not go away
Even those with the most entry-level appreciation of the Beckham feud know that it is rumoured to have started with the wedding dress — and Nicola choosing not to wear a dress designed by her mother-in-law.
Brooklyn has now officially contradicted this version of events, telling us that his mother pulled out of designing Nicola’s wedding dress: “My mum cancelled making Nicola’s dress in the eleventh hour despite how excited she was to wear her design, forcing her to urgently find a new dress.” This doesn’t quite clear up the feud origin story, however, as it contradicts the bride’s stylist, Leslie Fremar’s, version of events, which is that the bride’s Valentino couture dress was a year in the making. The Hollywood stylist told US Vogue that it took two trips to Valentino’s atelier in Rome and his design team made two fitting visits to the US plus a final dress fit in Miami.
On this one recollections definitely vary, including the bride’s. In 2022 in an interview with The Sunday Times she denied a feud but gamely tried to get to the root of whatever it was: “I think it all started, and I’ve said this before, because I didn’t end up wearing Victoria’s wedding dress. But the real truth is I really, really wanted to wear it and I thought it was so beautiful that Brooklyn’s mom got to make that for me.” To confuse things further, in another interview later in the year she gave a slightly different version of events. “We connected to start designing the dress, and then a few days went by and I didn’t hear anything. Victoria called my mom and said her atelier couldn’t make it,” Nicola told Grazia USA. “So, I spoke to my mom and Leslie, and I was like, “Well, unfortunately, this can’t happen, so what’s the next step?’”
Is there any coming back from this? Is it possible? In the meantime the Beckham brand will not be dented. If anything it has made them more human and sympathetic, in the same way that King Charles’s estrangement from Harry has softened him in the eyes of his subjects and made him someone to be pitied with burdens similar to the ones we all carry. As for what happens next, it’s the same deal as with Charles and Harry (whose book Spare wasn’t a million miles off this airing of dirty linen on Instagram). We have to wait and see.