As someone who has been following and covering this Beckham-Peltz dispute since the beginning, it’s wild to see hot-takes of the situation this week from people who have only just realized that Brooklyn Beckham has fallen out with his parents. For what it’s worth, I think Brooklyn felt like the situation had gotten so toxic, he *had* to address the situation publicly and in his own words. The comments on his Instagram and Nicola Peltz’s Instagram were getting way out of hand, and David and Victoria Beckham’s media allies were still, as of this past weekend, promoting a narrative that Nicola is “the problem” and Brooklyn is desperate to leave his wife and reconcile with his parents. Brooklyn had to say it clearly and on the record: it’s my decision to go no-contact with my parents and here are all of my reasons. Well, Page Six has a story in which a “source” says that Brooklyn’s statement is completely accurate:
“It’s too late” for Victoria and David Beckham to make amends with son Brooklyn, a source said, after his astonishing Instagram tirade against his family — who, the source said, were “relentless” in creating problems for their son and daughter-in-law. Brooklyn, 26, released a bombshell statement Monday in which he accused his parents of trying to sabotage his marriage to Nicola Peltz, staging “endless attacks” on “privately and publicly,” and putting “Brand Beckham” ahead of all other family values.
“As much as this sounds crazy and unhinged, everything Brooklyn said in his statement is true,” one source familiar with the situation told Page Six. Asked if there was any chance of Brooklyn reuniting with his parents, the source added, “It’s too late … for now. He’s had enough.”
Other insiders said Brooklyn was compelled to make the statement following media reports over the weekend that he wished to reconcile with his family. “I do not want to reconcile with my family,” Brooklyn wrote. “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.”
As Page Six reported last week, many in the Beckham orbit had hoped there would be a thaw in relations, but, the source said, “It’s on David and Victoria to acknowledge some of their behavior. They may not want to hear it, but every word of Brooklyn’s statement was true. They tried to separate Nicola and Brooklyn, and they tried to push stories out. They were relentless—– and the more you keep poking at it, the worse you’re making the situation and they weren’t getting it.”
Another insider said that “two things can be true,” pointing out the situation has become intolerable because Peltz can be “crazy” and wants her own way, while Victoria can be “dreadful” — and Brooklyn was stuck in the middle.
“For my entire life, my parents have controlled narratives in the press about our family [with] performative social media posts, family events and inauthentic relationship,” Brooklyn’s statement read in part. “Recently, I have seen with my own eyes the lengths that they’ll go through to place countless lies in the media, mostly at the expense of innocent people, to preserve their own facade.”
Speaking about the statement, the source said, “David and Victoria kept trying to push Brooklyn and Nicola apart, they kept doing it. If they love Brooklyn, they have a funny way of showing it. They’ve had every opportunity to apologize and they didn’t.”
Yeah, this is a situation where two things can be true at once – Nicola and her family are problematic, BUT Victoria and David absolutely did the most to smear Nicola and ruin their son’s marriage. Say what you will about the Peltz family, but they’re tight-knit and they’ve always supported Brooklyn, Nicola and their marriage from the start. You can’t say the same about the Beckhams whatsoever. Meanwhile, sources told Page Six that there’s been a breakdown in trust:
Brooklyn Beckham reached a point of no return in his feud with his famous parents, David and Victoria Beckham.
“There has been a massive breakdown in trust,” an insider tells Page Six of the breaking point, which happened “last week” — just days before the chef released a bombshell statement directed at his family. “From Brooklyn and [wife] Nicola [Peltz’s] perspective they have tried everything they can to repair the relationship privately with David and Victoria, they’ve tried to talk it out, have tried to have meetings with them, but ultimately in the end they just didn’t trust them anymore.”
Brooklyn and Peltz had also allegedly reached a point of frustration with reading things that “weren’t true.”
“They’d had enough,” the source explains, noting that as the drama has escalated in recent months, “This ultimately has become a huge power struggle between two powerful families. The couple just doesn’t want to deal with it anymore. They’ve had it and just want to move on in their lives. Last week was the last straw, they just couldn’t handle it anymore.”
“This ultimately has become a huge power struggle between two powerful families.” It’s so funny because the Peltzs are Palm Beach billionaire Republicans who look down on the Beckhams as the British Clampetts only tackier. Meanwhile, the Beckhams acted as if Nicola and her family were desperate to be associated with “Brand Beckham” and profit from the hallowed Beckham name. There’s always been such a wide disparity between how the two families viewed themselves and each other. That’s been amazing to watch as well. Think about it this way: the Peltzes never spoke a word about Victoria and David’s bullsh-t around the wedding. They kept up their family omerta and supported Nicola behind-the-scenes.
Photos courtesy of Victoria’s IG and Nicola’s IG.
I don’t follow any of the Beckhams that closely, but Brooklyn has always struck me as a thoroughly ordinary young man, despite his huge privilege, who would have been happier living a quiet life away from the media spotlight. I believe his statement, honestly.
The comparison to Meghan is what infuriates me about the discourse I’m seeing online. It’s completely misguided.
Nicola comes from billionaire family—her family’s wealth and influence put her on equal fitting with the Beckhams in every aspect that matters. She has not been subject to discrimination and ostracism.
And Harry is NOT like Brooklyn. Please.
I have zero sympathy with enormously rich MAGA families or the rich guy that married into this family.
They are nothing like Meghan and Harry.
I don’t understand at all why they’re being defended here of all places. I don’t care how tightly knit they are or supportive of their rich kid and her husband.
There are billions of people being affected in far worse ways by people like Trump and Putin.
My sympathy goes to them.
See I find this sort of thing part of the problem. The you’re good or bad and if you’re on the wrong side of politics by association you deserve zero empathy. No he’s not suffering as much as others, but that’s not relevant. They don’t have to be like Meghan and Harry for people to sympathise with him and be shocked his parents are running a smear campaign against him. It’s just about fairness and empathy for a young person dealing with the toxic press and a toxic family.
Amen to all of this! Brooklyn is not Harry—for one, Harry has never lied about his experiences. Brooklyn, on the other hand, isn’t even being honest in this statement. I don’t trust anything that he or his MAGA in laws have to say about any of this.
@ ElizaD–See, I think it IS relevant actually. Nobody is obligated to sympathize with any of them. A lot of us have an overburdened emotional bandwidth these days, given the endless atrocities occurring in the US and elsewhere. Sorry but I simply don’t have the sympathy to spare on the family drama of the 1% and I won’t apologize or feel bad about that.
i don’t know, like kaiser says in the article: it can be two things. her family (and her, on her own or by association) can be horrible people that i don’t give two figs for, and brooklyn can be a kid emotionally abused by his toxic family. both things can be true at the same time. for what it’s worth (which is nothing), i believe his account more or less. everything he says jives with the beckham personas we’ve seen through the years. doesn’t make anyone in this story ‘good’ or worthy of our time or attention.
@kitten-i agree about the emotional bandwidth, although i will say stupid gossip like this that doesn’t affect me at all is a nice enough distraction right now.
@ Mblates-Yeah I hear ya. I mean, I’m here commenting so obviously there’s an element of mindless escapism that appeals to me…I’m just generally resentful of the uber-rich these days.
“I find this sort of thing part of the problem. The you’re good or bad and if you’re on the wrong side of politics by association you deserve zero empathy.”
Maybe once upon a time, but not this time, with ICE roaming around being violent and the USA threatening their closest allies.
If you’re a MAGA, you’re awful and that is still putting it mildly.
Seems Brooklyn got his side out there and he seems to be done and wants to move forward. I hope that he does and he doesn’t say anything more. As for his family well they seem a lot like the Windsors and will keep beating a dead horse and they will do it publicly!
Someone said that Victoria got overly attached to her eldest son because of David’s constant and open cheating. And it makes so much sense. She wants to be the only woman in her sons life. His line about her hijacking their first wedding dance was chilling
The line about the dance is contradicted by the Vogue reporting. There are three lies in his statement. So while I feel bad for him, I think he causing a lot of drama himself. If you’re going to make this sort of statement, don’t lie or get caught in one. Ridiculous also to complain about being forced to turn up for family events when he has no job. They always turn up for his events. It’s not easy growing up in public tho, probably he feels more like a brand to them than a person. It feels like he has moved from one abusive relationship to another one.
How he felt and objective reality might not be a perfect match but that doesn’t make his feelings a lie. He felt Posh stepped into a moment he was supposed to have with his bride, so no surprise the dance itself felt inappropriate to him.
Or maybe Vogue got it wrong. I think the guy knows what happened at his own wedding. Also, he said pretty clearly that he was forced to drop professional obligations to show up for the family photos. Finally, how very odd that you parrot the story that his relationship with his wife is abusive when he clearly says that is not the case.
Yup, Vogue and a couple of other publications said they had two “first” dances — I think the first was to an Elvis song. And we know that Nicola did not have to “scramble to find a dress at the last minute.” She worked with a very well-known stylist, and she wore Valentino, which involved multiple fittings over a year. He’s embellishing the truth about super trivial details, and you really have to wonder why.
These things can happen. When my dad passed, one of my brothers took his place. He & my mom are like an old married couple. He never married or had children. She disliked & discouraged any of his girlfriends. They were never “good enough” for him. So he never truly separated from her. Now that she’s elderly, I am glad he is there to keep an eye on her, but I’m also kind of sad he didn’t live his own life. My mom has a big personality & can be quite controlling. Victoria may also be like this.
These people are billionaires, if Vogue got it wrong it would have been corrected. Vogue also says that he invited his mom up on stage to dance with him.
The family also turned up for all his silly one off jobs to support him.
That photo of the Beckham family group pic looks like an ad for Madame Tussaud’s.
For the record, I have always believed Brooklyn’s side of things. Because I believe that the Beckhams have always been all about their brand, that they very carefully control it, and that their children were part of their brand.
Also a general observation: there is almost always someone in the family who lets their crazy out when it comes to weddings. I was a wedding planner for five years and saw hundreds of weddings and it happened with my own wedding coming from two of my relatives.
Like your mother and mother-in-law wearing ivory to your wedding? True story 😆 Weirdoes.
Oh nooo I’m sorry! My mother and mother in law were both great. My sister lost her mind when I got engaged and accused me of depleting my mother’s life savings for my wedding (I never asked her for any money). My uncle would not leave me alone about walking me down the aisle (my dad died when i was a teenager). He even wrote me a guilt trip letter. (he is married to my mom’s sister, not my dad’s brother which would at least be understandable).
The line, that she was dancing ‘on me’ is pretty weird. I’ve seen inappropriate attachments like that close up, it’s always an issue when the son gets married or finds a partner. I believe everything he’s said tbh it’s classic for controlling image conscious parents.
Come to find out apparently she “got up on stage and wrapped her arms around him and nuzzled into his neck”
The line she was dancing ‘on me’ is very creepy! I’ve seen inappropriate relationships like that, there’s always a control issue when the son finds someone they marry or partner with. I believe him, there’s a familiar pattern of behaviour children from controlling and narcissistic parents can recognise. My kids are in their 20’s and they say online that people are mostly supporting him.
I kind of wonder if she gets tipsy easily? She’s tiny and after some wedding champagne… Still uncomfortable but not like she was trying to grind up on her son or something. Just embarrassingly clingy.
Thank you for that interpretation @Jais because I was concerned VB was maybe TWERKING on her own son 😨
Yeah, I just don’t think she was twerking on her son. But being tipsy and overly clingy in a way that made him feel embarrassed and uncomfortable, which is what he said he felt,
It’s like the way Scooter behaved with Harry.
Anyone who has dealt with toxic, narcissistic family dynamics recognized the tone and tactic of Brooklyn’s statement. Going public with specific names, events, and details is strategy for dealing with narcissistic parties who chose to engage third parties, publicly and privately, to harangue/contact the party who wants to be left alone. Brooklyn clearly has tried to set boundaries, grey rock, dealt with flying monkeys, until he resorted to estrangement.
That all this came out with the wedding is no surprise. Enmeshed mothers go insane when their sons get married and go check out r/justnoMIL for stories of just regular people who have gone through the same! People who keep saying that Brooklyn needs to keep this out of the media need to realize that they are, perhaps inadvertently, enabling the Beckhams’ behavior. While Brooklyn stays silent, it creates a vacuum for his parents to allow “sources” to plant stories so that when he refutes anything, he is criticized for responding to gossip and “airing dirty laundry.”
It’s also important that Kaiser’s main point is emphasized: for all the faults of the Peltz’s they’ve never briefed against the Beckhams in the same way that the Beckhams have done to them.
I’m betting P6’s “source” is Nicola’s publicist. I get why people like to draw comparisons to Meghan and Harry with this conflict, but the only similarities are wealthy families and estrangement—that’s it.
I think loudly choosing one’s wife over one’s family of origin is unusual enough (among people we only know through gossip columns) that this parallel makes sense.
I think the comparison is offensive when you consider the fact that Meghan dealt with racism and ostracism, and Harry dealt with physical abuse from members of his family. Meanwhile, Brooklyn is claiming that his relationship with his parents and siblings is irrevocably broken because his mom screwed up the run of show at his wedding reception, wouldn’t make his wife a dress, and apparently tried to give him millions before he got married to lock down the Beckham brand. The similarities are superficial, at best.
The similarities are about the way two women are talked about within the British tabloids. It’s a trope narrative that is being used that is misogynistic. That’s the similarity. No one is saying Meghan and Nicola are the same women. But they are both being called controlling women who took their husbands hostage and brainwashed them. That is a similarity. There is no racism in this case and what Meghan went through was on another level and absolutely unique. No one is equating the two. That doesn’t changed the fact that the tabloids used the same narrative to discuss two very different women. Equally, I find the discussion of the toxic controlling mom who can’t give up her son’s attention to be equally offensive. Relationships and family are tough. Discussing them through these lenses, which is what the tabloids do, is gross.
I think the narrative of the toxic woman being used against Meghan was wrong because it’s completely false. But given Nicola’s history, which predates her association with Brooklyn, I think she is actually toxic. I have acknowledged the similarities, and, respectfully, I do not agree with you on this one. I am with you on the “boy mom” rhetoric that’s emerged, though–it’s gross.
Yeah no. I’m not calling either woman toxic at this point.
Here’s what I’ll say. I think the Beckhams got burned in the BM when they were young. There was the soccer and the cheating scandal and they did get hit hard. And over time, especially when they moved back to the uk from the states, they clearly made invisible contracts with the press for better coverage. There’s pictures of both David and Victoria with a DM journalist, Katie Hinds(?) so there are clearly ties there. And I get it to an extent. In their mind, protecting the family brand is also a way to protect the family. But like they said at the wedding, Nicola is not considered family and they’ve used those same tabloid connections to smear her as a controlling wife who took their son hostage and brainwashed him. Brooklyn and Nicola were also countering those stories through the use of anonymous sources but now Brooklyn publicly has said he doesn’t currently want reconciliation. It is what it is.
I don’t understand the underlying problem – what do Victoria and David think is so wrong with Nicola?
That’s what I’ve been trying figure out too. I guess because she’s not a quiet, compliant little English rose? Seems to be a common thing the Brits want their sons to marry.
Some people just don’t want in-laws in the family under any circumstances.
I come from a family like that, it’s hard to date knowing that your family will automatically hate anyone you bring home, and you don’t want to bring anyone home, and having an SO means you can’t have your family, or vice versa.
I mean I am just going to say that it’s obvious in these two articles that these “sources” are Brooklyn’s…so, I find it pretty meh to be sobbing about his family talking to the media. It’s very clear that from the beginning Brooklyn and Nicola have also been feeding “their side” to the tabloids and not always in response to anything.
I also find Brooklyn’s statements about his parents “sending” his siblings to attack him to be extremely questionable. Brooklyn or his people were clearly the source of all the reporting that his brother’s girlfriend (Brooklyn’s ex) was rude and mean to his wife and made her uncomfortable. To now claim that this was some set up by his parents who weaponized his siblings to attack him…nah I am not buying it at all.
I don’t have any idea what really happened here. If I had to guess, both sides behaved poorly. But, I am not impressed by the straight up dishonesty and revisionist history in Brooklyn’s statements.
Yes to this post. First off, good for Brooklyn for standing up for himself and supporting his wife.i don’t doubt he feels what he wrote is true. And there probably is some emotional truth in it, that he hated feeling like an extension of his parents’ brand.
However his statement contains some clear lies or at least big omissions on context. He is cherry picking to serve his narrative.
I assume.the truth is somewhere in the middle. His parents do not like his wife (and given what has been said about her and her family for years, they may have valid reason to). His parents then were rude and crossed boundaries that the couple tried to set. Now he wants nothing to do with his parents.
And his parents are biased and don’t want to listen.
When a child pushes away from his/her family it is because of how they make them feel. It often sounds like the beef is trivial when they give examples— and to outsiders it seems ridiculous to throw away one’s mother over something that seems completely defendable from the outside. Which is why Brooklyn should have just said the estrangement was his decision for his mental health, and not given examples for people to dissect.
Poor little nepo baby. Meanwhile, the world continues to burn.
People with normal, loving, parents never understand people who don’t have normal loving parents unless the parents are abusing them in ways that are CLEAR to them. I believe that he wanted to escape and chose a younger version of his Mom as an escape route. I’m looking away now.
I believe Brooklyn… his gripes may sound juvenile and petty but I am sure there were minor issues through his life that just kept mounting. He found support in his wife and he bounced. Now everybody is blaming the wife for manipulating his family relationship…lol. Typical.
David Beckham is a desperate social climbing donkey.
They all just need to go to their respective corners, lick their wounds, and shut the hell up. What seems like a difference of opinions and wanting autonomy has turned into an all out tabloid war.
Brooklyn IS married. Point, blank, period.
His wife is now his priority as she should be. The parents don’t have to like her, but unless their son is in imminent danger from this woman or her family, they need to just put up and shut up. The more Nicola is attacked the wider the divide will be between them and their son. They are making it harder for him to come to them if he does have problems. I don’t understand why they don’t get that.
If this was an AITA, I think most people would be team OP. Knowing what we know, both sides are problematic but most of us also have experience direct or indirect with adult children going low or no contact with their parents for reasons all across the spectrum. It doesn’t happen for no reason. I think fwiw, that D & V had their children in order to have mini versions of themselves, never gave them sufficient life skills, wanted them to be dependent dilettantes, never carving out careers or identities of their own and never being as good as their parents in anything they chose to do. To me, that’s an awful existence. The other sons are playing ball for now but what happens when they meet someone their parents don’t like? Also, I personally got the ick about the “she’s not blood” comments. Did they want him to go royal and marry a cousin?
The Beckham’s as a couple really think they are the ultimate and basically see the children as an extension of themselves, even when they’re way too old to be accessories to their brand. I think they’re weird and thirsty. I don’t find Brooklyn and his wife that likable but there is a lot of hurt and resentment. All this drama was so unnecessary. I don’t get any of this.