“It’s not about him, it’s about me,” declares Victoria Beckham (“him” being her husband, Sir David Beckham).
And that’s exactly what we get in a new three-part documentary, which drops on Netflix on Thursday.
The former Spice Girl and fashion entrepreneur, 51, is determined to tell her own story – two years after former England captain Sir David, 50, released his own, hugely successful TV series.
The episodes take us inside Victoria’s pop career, family life, struggles to reinvent herself and preparation for a major show at Paris Fashion Week.
We also learn about the serious financial troubles her fashion business faced, and how she feared she might “lose everything”.
There are contributions from famous friends, including Eva Longoria, and fashion titans such as Dame Anna Wintour and Donatella Versace.
Here are our main takeaways from her documentary.
Before the Spice Girls, Victoria was ‘not cool’
Lady Beckham achieved dizzying fame in the Spice Girls, so it’s hard to believe that at school, she was “that uncool kid” who didn’t fit in.
“I was definitely a loner at school”, she says, explaining she was bullied.
The Spice Girls came together in 1994, after Mel B, Mel C, Emma Bunton, Geri Halliwell and Victoria responded to an advert for candidates.
After the release of their chart-topping debut single Wannabe in 1996, “Spice mania” swept the planet, with their self-styled “Girl Power” mantra – a brand of female empowerment that made them a global pop culture phenomenon.
Lady Beckham credits her bandmates for making her “more lighthearted, more fun” and says it was the first time she felt popular.
She still had to face negative headlines about her weight, and discusses having an eating disorder. She says she never talked about it publicly, or even very much with her parents, but that it made her become “very good at lying”.
But Lady Beckham says the other Spice Girls made her “feel good enough” about being herself. It’s a message she continues to instil in her daughter Harper, 14.
“I tell Harper every day, be who you are,” she says.
What was buried in Baden-Baden?
Geri Halliwell left the Spice Girls in 1998 and the group split up in 2001.
Lady Beckham says she found the transition “really, really difficult”.
She carried on making music, but the criticism she received “really hurt”.
Then came the infamous WAG period. Pictures of Victoria and other wives and girlfriends supporting their footballer partners in the German town of Baden-Baden in 2006 were plastered all over the tabloids.
“It was fun,” says Lady Beckham of that time in her life.
But she now concedes there was an “element of attention seeking” to it all. “I was trying to find myself, I felt incomplete, sad, frozen in time maybe,” she says.
After the family moved to the US, Lady Beckham decided she wanted to work in fashion.
But to do that, she knew she had to shed her other personas – the Spice Girl, the WAG. “I buried those boobs in Baden-Baden,” she says.
Victoria ‘almost lost everything’ in struggles with fashion business
Lady Beckham is strikingly honest about the struggles her fashion business faced.
She says people didn’t see her as “cool at all”, and that a lot of people refused to take her seriously.
And Vogue giant Dame Anna cements that view when she says of Victoria’s fashion aspirations: “I thought maybe this was a hobby. I didn’t quite believe it.”
We see the growth of Victoria Beckham Ltd, but also the serious financial troubles it faced. Sir David says he didn’t think her business would survive, while Lady Beckham agrees.
“I almost lost everything, and that was a dark, dark time,” she says. “I used to cry before I went to work every day because I felt like a firefighter.”
She says her firm was “tens of millions in the red”.
In a later scene, her voice breaks, and she wells up in tears when she recalls how Sir David stepped in to help her business out.
But the series also shows her turning things around, and we see her pull out all the stops in the run-up to her triumphant Spring/Summer show at Paris Fashion Week in September 2024.
Supermodel Gigi Hadid walked for her, wearing a striking emerald green gown. Dame Anna is shown in attendance, and, in an earlier clip, says Lady Beckham “totally proved us wrong”.
Today, Victoria’s business has offices in London and New York, with its flagship store in Mayfair, London. The brand’s products are in 230 stores across 50 countries around the world, according to the company’s website.
Family life carries on, amid reports of feud with Brooklyn
The couple’s eldest son, 26-year-old Brooklyn, gets a few mentions in the show and appears briefly. Lady Beckham brings him up in conversation when discussing the morning sickness she faced while pregnant with him and performing with the Spice Girls.
But for the past few months, much of the online interest around the Beckhams has focused on reports that Brooklyn and his wife Nicola have fallen out with the rest of the family.
The couple were absent from David Beckham’s 50th birthday celebrations and did not post a birthday message online, fuelling the intrigue.
Nicola has, in the past, denied there was a feud in the family. Sir David and Lady Beckham have never acknowledged the rumoured rift and declined to comment when asked by BBC News.
We did get a hint on the topic recently from Victoria, who told the Sunday Times how she felt Liam and Noel Gallagher’s reconciliation must have made their mother “so happy”.
“As a mum, that must be… she must feel so happy to see her boys getting on,” she said.
Showbiz reporter Catrina Rose notes there was “no hint” of any alleged feud in the series.
“Victoria’s setting a lot of records straight here, but she’s not being drawn on this particular topic.”
There’s a good explanation for why she doesn’t smile
Lady Beckham’s pout became her defining look in the 1990s. But in the new series, she admits there’s a deeper reason as to why she never smiles.
“The minute I see a camera, I change,” she says.
“The barrier goes up, my armour goes on, and that’s when, you know, the miserable cow that doesn’t smile – that’s when she comes out. And I’m so conscious of that.”
She adds that she would “rather not be that person” and wishes she had the confidence to walk out in front of cameras and smile.
Elsewhere, she insists that she does actually smile.
“I’ve looked miserable for all these years because when we stand on the red carpet, this guy has always gone on the left,” she says, gesturing at Sir David.
“When I smile, I smile from the left, because if I smile from the right, I look unwell. So consequently I’m smiling on the inside, but no one ever sees it, so that’s why I look so moody.”
That’s one use of a noisy kitchen blender
The programme is filled with small details about the Beckhams’ relationship – many of which we didn’t know before.
For example, Sir David starts a blender when he doesn’t want to listen to Victoria (so she says, anyway).
The pair have fond memories of their whirlwind romance in the 1990s, which led to them getting married and having a baby within two years.
Sir David reflects that his parents – and his manager – would have preferred him to marry a local girl who stayed in Manchester, where he was playing for Manchester United. “But I didn’t want that,” he says, opting instead for globe-trotting celebrity Victoria.
“I was so excited, I wanted everyone to know I was dating Posh Spice,” the former England captain says.
Lady Beckham, for her part, says she was never a young girl dreaming of getting married or becoming a mum. “It wasn’t until I met David that those things even occurred to me,” she says.
There won’t be another Beckham baby
In the final episode, which was filmed before Sir David’s 50th birthday this year, the pair get reflective about everything they have achieved, and what lies ahead for them.
“Success, it feels good, I’m not going to lie,” says Victoria. “I’ve still got a lot that I want to do.”
Sir David, for his part, seems to have something else on his mind.
“Now we’re both, well I’m almost 50, you’re 51, what’s next? Another baby?,” David asks his wife.
Victoria laughs. “Another baby? My God. No.”
Victoria Beckham, a three-part documentary series, is available now on Netflix.
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