The Beckhams would have known at first glance that the six-part statement, delivered via Instagram, didn’t contain good news.
Featuring centred white text on a sombre black background, delivered in multiple slides, with no music: it had all the Gen Z hallmarks of a devastating bout of truth and sincerity, the kind only ever reserved for excavated personal trauma, legal denials and mea culpas. Brooklyn’s was all three.
“I have been silent for years and made every effort to keep these matters private. Unfortunately, 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,” Brooklyn started.
Over the following 821 words, the 26-year-old self-appointed chef, one-time photographer and occasional model took his followers through a blow-by-blow account of how his parents allegedly tried to wreck his relationship with his now-wife Nicola Peltz Beckham.
They have consistently sought to belittle him, he alleged, painted Nicola as controlling and manipulative, and later maliciously alienated the couple, all to protect the family name.
“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. 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,” he said.
The details he went on to cite are many and various, some deeply sad and plausible, others so surreal as to verge on hilarious.
Ultimately, he reiterates the salient point somewhere towards the end.
“My family values public promotion and endorsements above all else. Brand Beckham comes first. Family ‘love’ is decided by how much you post on social media, or how quickly you drop everything to show up and pose for a family photo op,” he said.
“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.”
The Beckhams – David and Victoria – have been contacted for their response, but as of Tuesday afternoon, the silence from the opposition’s camp was telling.
Sources close to the Beckhams told The Telegraph that the family’s immediate reaction was one of shock, more than anger or disappointment – though those followed swiftly in train.
It is no wonder: to question whether the Beckhams expected this, even after the gradual ratcheting of tension and speculation over the four years since any hostility between the two generations was first reported, is to fundamentally misunderstand the Beckham machine.
Over more than a quarter of a century, the family has built a reputational fortress, able to fend off all attacks, smother rumours, silence any loose-lipped acquaintances and present its members precisely as they wish to be seen.
Yet the potential threats to Brand Beckham have always been external. Those are easy to look out for, and easy to control.
Imagine their surprise, then, when in the end, to use the internet’s favourite phrase at the moment, it turns out the call was coming from inside the house.
All fortresses are indeed vulnerable if blown up from within. Suddenly, Brand Beckham looks weaker than it has in decades, and its laundry room more open than ever.
For anybody staggering into the weeds of the family feud – naturally termed “Becksit” – for the first time, the newspapers today must make for particularly confusing and possibly tedious reading. There are long and short answers to the question of how things arrived at this point.
The first considers that Brooklyn was a part of the Beckham PR machine as soon as he was sentient. In the age of bought-and-sold tabloid access, every stage of his early years was publicised and, therefore, monetised.
He was 4 months old when he was trussed up in a matching purple outfit and served as the ring bearer at his parents’ wedding at Luttrellstown Castle in Ireland in 1999.
In photographs sold to OK! Magazine, he’s there in the middle, looking slightly uncomfortable, dwarfed by the megawatt fame of his football-icon father and Spice-Girl mother.
While his siblings – Romeo, now 23, Cruz, 20, and Harper Seven, 14 – would be granted more privacy as Brand Beckham developed, Brooklyn became the test case.
The anxious boy caught in his parents’ shadow stayed there. As he grew up in Madrid and Los Angeles, trailing his father’s footballing career and ever-expanding business empire, he became a man but remained “the Beckham boy”.
It’s little wonder, then, that while navigating a path through persistent media squalls, he tried his hand at various careers and struggled.
The way Brooklyn tells it, his parents have not always been encouraging of his experimentation, which has included forays into football, wildlife photography, fashion photography, modelling and cheffing.
A source close to him previously said he believes he has been made to feel like he is an “idiot” and “stupid”, leaving him “to feel small and worthless”.
Enter Nicola Peltz, a now 31-year-old actor and the daughter of billionaire investor Nelson Peltz and former model Claudia Heffner Peltz.
The pair met at Coachella music festival in 2017, then again at a Halloween party hosted by Leonardo DiCaprio two years later, before marrying at Palm Beach, Florida, in April 2022.
Initially, everybody got along.
“As a mother, to see my son so happy means so much,” Victoria said that October. “What more can you ask for?”
Behind the scenes, though, Brooklyn’s life in the US was allegedly being criticised by his parents.
Sources close to Brooklyn have claimed Victoria called Nicola when Brooklyn pivoted to cooking, expressing anger and embarrassment that her son now cooks for a living when he was previously a Vogue photographer “as if it’s beneath him and a bad look for the family”.
In what would not be the last similarity to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s own split from their family, the wedding appears to have prompted tensions, beginning with a dress fitting.
It was reported that Victoria Beckham had designed a bespoke gown for her future daughter-in-law, only for Nicola to wear a Valentino dress.
“I was going to and I really wanted to, and then a few months down the line, she realised that her atelier couldn’t do it, so then I had to pick another dress,” Nicola told Variety a few months later.
“She didn’t say you can’t wear it; I didn’t say I didn’t want to wear it. That’s where it started, and then [the media] ran with that.”
That’s not what Brooklyn claims now.
“My parents have been trying endlessly to ruin my relationship since before my wedding, and it hasn’t stopped,” he wrote in his statement.
“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.”
That suggestion is complicated by a Vogue interview with bridal stylist Leslie Fremer, who claimed the Valentino dress was “the culmination of a year’s worth of conversations with Valentino director Pierpaolo Piccioli’s team”.
This week, Nicola’s only Instagram activity has been to pay tribute to Valentino Garavani, who died yesterday.
Dress-gate was, Brooklyn alleges, one of several malevolent acts on the part of his parents around the wedding.
Sir David first trademarked both his surname and full name in August 2000, while DB Ventures Limited, his company, owns registered trademarks for “Beckham” across clothing, fragrances, and other merchandise.
Brooklyn, who added Nicola’s surname to his after his marriage, says that “weeks before our big day, my parents repeatedly pressured and attempted to bribe me into signing away the rights to my name”.
It is not clear exactly what Brooklyn means by this, but documents lodged with the UK’s Intellectual Property Office reportedly show that in December 2016, Victoria registered a trademark for her son’s name (and those of her other children), which expires at the end of this year – at which point he will be able to renew it himself.
His accusations get stranger from there, including that his mother “hijacked my first dance” while the singer Marc Anthony played.
Kiboshing her son’s plans for a “romantic dance with my wife”, Victoria allegedly “danced very inappropriately on me in front of everyone. I’ve never felt more uncomfortable or humiliated in my entire life”.
This detail has confused friends of the Beckhams, who have since pointed out that Brooklyn and Nicola’s first dance was to Elvis Presley’s Can’t Help Falling In Love, while the dance with Victoria was merely part of Marc Anthony’s set.
The very fact that, lamentably, there exists no video footage of Victoria “dancing very inappropriately on me in front of everyone” is significant in itself.
Such an event would spread like wildfire through WhatsApp groups after most weddings, and yet the Beckhams appear to have made sure it hasn’t.
In any case, according to Brooklyn, the damage was such that the couple decided to renew their vows last year “so we could create new memories of our wedding day that bring us joy and happiness, not anxiety and embarrassment”.
After the wedding, whispers of a rift only grew, and well-placed photo opportunities, including at the premieres of Sir David’s Netflix documentary series and Nicola’s film Lola were doing little to quieten the growing speculation.
Soon, absences were noticed. Nicola didn’t attend Victoria’s 50th birthday party in April 2024, citing her grandmother’s poor health. She and Brooklyn weren’t seen with the elder Beckhams all year.
And then, when Sir David’s 50th birthday prompted him to have a season of parties, seemingly inviting everybody he’d ever known, his son was not present. Brooklyn now claims he was not invited, despite travelling to London to try and see his father, and views his parents’ alleged dislike of his wife as the cause of their rejection.
“Victoria and David appear to want nothing more than to blame their shortcomings on their son’s wife as opposed to their own performative, narcissistic behaviour,” the source said. In turn, Brooklyn’s parents, and their friends, seem to believe Nicola keeps them from seeing their son.
“The narrative that my wife controls me is completely backwards,” Brooklyn said this week. And yet it persists, even after the statement. On Tuesday, a friend of the Beckham family told The Telegraph the reaction to Brooklyn’s sudden change of tone and ferocity has prompted concerns that he is “trapped” in the marriage.
The development certainly has been sudden. Six days ago, Brooklyn was posting Instagram recipes for “chicken parmesan”.
It is now understood that reports in a Daily Mail article last Sunday that Brooklyn “wants to reconcile” with his parents – a line he viewed as having been planted by his parents – proved to be “the final straw”, prompting him to publish a statement that’s been lurking in his drafts since at least last summer.
Now, Sir David and Victoria will be considering their next move. At a time when her fashion businesses are suffering, Victoria has been dragged back into the showbiz pages. Sir David, newly knighted, is having his gentlemanly credentials questioned again. Brand Beckham has been under siege plenty of times before, but not like this.
Sir David was in Davos in Switzerland on Tuesday, making an appearance at the World Economic Forum.
“David, do you have a message for Brooklyn this morning?” Sky News asked, as he made his way through the crowd.
He did not, but in an interview later that day, he did concede that “children are allowed to make mistakes. That’s how they learn”.
This year’s theme at Davos is “a spirit of dialogue”. Sir David’s eldest son has finally said his piece. Now, the world waits for his parents’ response.
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