David Beckham Says ‘It Wasn’t Easy’ to Convince Victoria Beckham to Do Her Own Netflix Docuseries, but It’s ‘Really Special’: ‘It’s So Emotional and the Drama’s Real’
David Beckham previewed Victoria Beckham’s upcoming Netflix docuseries at MIP London on Tuesday, telling the streamer’s chief content officer Bela Bajaria that “it’s really special” — but getting the former Spice Girl to participate, even after the success of his “Beckham” doc, took some convincing.
“It took a minute to try and get her to agree with it,” the former soccer star and Emmy-winning producer said. “It wasn’t something that was easy. I think I’m the only one who could convince her and I did, eventually.”
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Beckham said that viewers will see Victoria “in a different light” in the upcoming doc, which hails from his Studio 99 banner is being helmed by “Becoming” director Nadia Hallgren. The as-yet-untitled series started production in August and will follow Beckham’s journey from Spice Girls superstardom in the ‘90s to modern fashion maven with her eponymous brand.
“My wife is one of the hardest working women that I know, and she’s been building her business for the last 20 years,” Beckham said. “There’s so many different elements of this documentary that people are going to be surprised with … I suppose some people probably think she started this brand and it came very easy, but she’s been working for a long time.”
He added, “I think it’s going to be really special. It’s so emotional, there’s drama — and the drama’s real.”
Beckham then described a particularly tense scene that took place at last year’s Paris Fashion Week, saying: “I turned up, like I always do, the night before to see the venue and do the walk through with her. I’m never worried about one of her shows, but I was worried. It was scheduled for rain. The rain was horrendous. Girls were cold. Everything about it had the potential to go wrong.”
Beckham made a huge splash in 2023 with “Beckham,” the four-part docuseries chronicling his life, career and marriage to Victoria Beckham that was made through his own Studio 99 production company. Directed by Fisher Stevens, the series was met with critical acclaim and wound up winning the Emmy for outstanding documentary or nonfiction series last year.
Although Beckham again admitted that he didn’t like making the “Beckham” docuseries — and even called his team before production started to ask, “Is there any way of stopping this?” — he did enjoy seeing the aftermath of the show.
“The impact at the end was incredible,” he said. “The amount of people that have watched it, that loved it and got so much from it. That was the most rewarding part for me, to have people come up and say either, ‘Tank you for reminding us of the story,’ or ‘I didn’t know you went through those things,’ or, ‘Thank you for telling the stories about your family.’”
Beckham also spoke about his recent Hugo Boss campaign, which he said saw him “getting back into my underwear at 50” (Beckham actually turns 50 later this year). He claimed that he’d “hung my pants up 10 years ago” when he did his last campaign, and told his team he wasn’t doing anymore underwear modeling. But once a deal with Boss was signed, the pressure was there to do it again. “So I trained for it for 14 weeks, and for someone who loves food and wine — cutting that out for 14 weeks was tough.”
Once the campaign was released, Beckham recalled an embarrassing moment with his mother-in-law where she said she’d been looking it at with some friends and told him, “If you zoom in you can see everything!”
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