Victoria Beckham’s docuseries revelations: An eating disorder, her brand’s problems, and the absence of her eldest child, Brooklyn

In October 2023, David Beckham released a documentary about his life on Netflix, and one of the most viral anecdotes featured his wife, when she described her working-class origins, only for her husband to insist several times that she finally admit that her father drove her to school in a Rolls-Royce. Perhaps for that reason, Victoria Beckham has now decided to tell her life story, and she does so in a docuseries premiering on October 9, on the same streaming platform, three episodes in which the designer reviews her life, from joining the Spice Girls to founding her own fashion brand and nearly going bankrupt. There’s no time — or intent — to discuss the difficulties faced by a marriage that has been generating headlines for three decades: the rumors of infidelity during their time in Madrid or the current lack of contact they maintain with Brooklyn, their firstborn, who doesn’t appear in the documentary.

Victoria Beckham’s narrative thread is the brand’s Paris Fashion Week show in September 2024. The preparations for the big event are interspersed with chapters in her life that have shaped her into the person she is today. “You think it’s going to be his moment, but it’s not about him. It’s about me,” Victoria says of her husband.

Everyone knows her as Posh Spice, but there’s a lesser-known story behind the image: “When people say, ‘The Spice Girls changed my life and made me accept who I am,’ it was the same for me. That uncool kid at school that’s awkward, that was me,” she says. It’s then that she begins to talk about her childhood and how she used to accompany her father at work: “We built electrical things. We’d ride in the back of a van, in our pajamas, and I’d go around delivering the things we’d built.”

She knew her dream early on: “To go to one of those American drama schools, but I went to classes at a local community center in Hertfordshire. I was an outcast at school, bullied, unsociable, and didn’t fit in. I didn’t want to be myself, I didn’t like it, but I desperately wanted to be liked.” Thanks to a newspaper ad, the opportunity that would change her life came around: “I’d never thought about being in a pop group, and suddenly, there was an audition for a girl band.”

This is how she became part of one of the most important British groups in history, something that changed her personality and how she presented herself to others: “I’m more eccentric than I thought. That or I’m completely crazy. They made me happier, more fun; it was the first time I felt like I belonged and was popular. My life would be very different if I hadn’t met those four girls,” she recalls.

In 1997, three years after the group, then at its peak, was formed, she would meet her husband and father of her four children, who also appears in the docuseries. “I didn’t see a single thing I didn’t like about her. Now I can find quite a few. At the time, she was a phenomenon, and I was just a footballer in Manchester. I fell madly in love with her,” says the former England captain. They tell a story about when they were preparing for dinner with King Charles III — there’s no footage of the meeting, but it is mentioned — and, at one point, he offers her a chocolate bar: “I haven’t had chocolate since the 90s, I’m not going to start now,” she replies, laughing.

The Spice Girls were the biggest group of the era, but in 1998 everything changed: Geri Halliwell left the band. “I went from being on top, going on tour… we were like a tornado, and then it stopped. I was spreading the message of girl power, and the next day I was a wife in a flat in Manchester, who didn’t have many friends and was living far from her family,” she admits. She continues: “People wondered what I was doing. I’d be lying if I said I was the best singer or dancer, but people are mean; you hear and see things that always make you feel unimportant. That hurts. They thought I was a miserable cow who never smiled, and they weren’t wrong.” They continued as a four-piece until 2000, while Victoria juggled pop stardom with motherhood: “I had to run off stage to throw up, and the bodysuit I was wearing had to be stretched every day. I told the tour manager I couldn’t carry on.”

One of the most complicated chapters of their marriage was when the family moved to Spain in 2003 after David signed for Real Madrid and rumors of his infidelity with his assistant, Rebecca Loos, began to swirl. The designer sums up her four-year stay in the Spanish capital in just a couple of comments: it’s where she met Eva Longoria, now one of her closest friends. “I felt incomplete, sad, frozen in time,” she explains. In 2007, the Beckhams moved to Los Angeles, where they would start from scratch: “It was as if we had escaped.” In the Californian city, she would discover her next career path: fashion. “No one took me seriously in this industry. I knew I wanted to be a designer, but I needed them to believe in me.”

That’s when French designer Roland Mouret came into her life. “I told her, ‘You have to have an ego and be humble to accept reality. You have to respect the team around you; without them, you’re nobody. You’ll have to learn and pick up pins from the floor.’ She had to be authentic. To make her dream a reality, we had to get rid of the WAG [an acronym for wives and girlfriends coined by UK tabloids around the England national soccer team],” explains the designer. Before they began working together, her former Spice Girls bandmates suggested she return to the stage. “I’ve never forgotten that’s the reason I’m sitting here now. I didn’t fit in on stage anymore; they were the ones who told me not to hold back. It was time to do something different.”

Thus, a new person was born: “I knew that to start this chapter in my life, I had to change, to get rid of my other personalities: I buried those boobs and became a simpler, more elegant version.” Other industry figures, such as Tom Ford, Anna Wintour, and Donatella Versace, support the businesswoman’s story in the documentary from a sincere and critical perspective. “When I found out Victoria was starting her own clothing line, I wanted to call her and say, ‘why?’ A lot of people didn’t take her seriously,” explains the Italian designer. Donatella recounts an anecdote in which the singer asked for one of her designs to be altered: “She shouldn’t have done that. I was shocked. How dare she! Then I realized it looked better on her her way.”

In 2008, the Victoria Beckham brand was born. “People thought: ‘She was a pop star, she’s married to a footballer. Who does she think she is?’ I still get judged on all levels for coming from where I come from,” she says. “Throughout my life, I’ve used clothes to transform myself into someone else, to be who I’ve always wanted to be but didn’t come naturally. I remember my mum telling me, ‘If you dress up for the plane, and there’s any chance of an upgrade, they’ll always look at who’s better dressed.’ The truth is, there’s no first class on budget airlines, and my mum didn’t wear designer clothes.”

Despite the success of her first New York show, criticism continued, and some even questioned whether she had designed the collection. This constant public criticism would directly affect her health: “I started to doubt myself and not like myself. I didn’t know what I saw when I looked in the mirror. I’ve been everything from the chubby posh girl to the skinny posh girl. I had no control over what was written about me, but I could control it with my clothes, and I could control my weight, but in a very unhealthy way. When you have an eating disorder, you become an expert at lying: I was never honest with my parents and I didn’t talk about it in public.”

She silenced all the rumors and showcased the brand’s potential — “She proved us wrong. It was clear there was a vision,” says Wintour. But everything started to spiral out of control: “We went from small presentations to bigger shows, we were doing it in a more extravagant way, and the business wasn’t growing at the same pace. The losses were huge,” she now acknowledges. That her brand was in financial trouble wasn’t just rumor, it was reality: “It was public knowledge, I felt ashamed. I had to take the hit because I was in serious trouble.” In 2016, everything came crashing down. “We sat down and looked at what I had invested. It was hard for both of us; I didn’t have the money to continue doing it, and in the end, I told her I couldn’t,” David Beckham recalls.

Then David Belhassen appeared, agreeing to become an investor in the firm. “It was a disaster, the worst business in existence: a lot of losses and no profits,” the entrepreneur explains. “For years, people told her what she wanted to hear. One of the expenses was plants for the office, which cost $70,000 a year, and someone would water the plants for $15,000. That was just the beginning.” Now Victoria acknowledges all these mistakes: “I let it happen. People were afraid to say no to me. I take responsibility for my mistakes.”

Not only did things change at the company, but the way she presented herself to the world through social media also changed, with tutorials and an approachability that had been unusual for her until then: “As soon as I see a camera, I change, the barrier goes up, and I put on my armor. That’s when I’m the moody, unsmiling vixen — that’s when it comes out, and I’m aware of it.”

The show she organized in September 2024 at Paris Fashion Week was her largest to date, although it wasn’t easy due to unexpected problems that arose. “I’ve worked hard to earn this place in the industry,” she says. Her entire family was with her on the big day, but there’s no sign of Brooklyn or his wife, Nicola Peltz, in the docuseries. When the camera pans to them, there’s a cut and a change of shot. Of the couple’s four children, the undisputed star is 14-year-old Harper, whom they’re already beginning to introduce to public life.

The docuseries ends with the couple in their Cotswolds home, where they reflect on how everything has changed: “I’ve spent so many years fighting that now I feel like I have an opportunity and I can’t let it slip away. I feel terrible about all that time when I had to ask you for help. I could see how proud you all were of me at the last show,” the designer confesses. “What’s next?” her husband asks, and before she can answer, he says with a laugh: “Another baby.” Her latest venture was a family getaway to Mallorca after presenting her new collection at Paris Fashion Week on October 3. Brooklyn wasn’t on the Balearic island or in the French capital.

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