All of the British tabloids have run “exclusives” on the Beckham family situation in the past year, often detailing Brooklyn Beckham’s estrangement from his parents in the most pro-Victoria/David way and blaming the estrangement on the American wife, Nicola Peltz. The Daily Mail has been the biggest one pushing this storyline, and I believe that the Mail has gotten tons of briefings from David and Victoria’s camp. Well, in a new Mail exclusive, Alison Boshoff admits as much. Boshoff also describes how D&V’s camp pushed a fake storyline about Brooklyn’s estrangement from his grandparents (which has been repeated constantly), even though it turns out that Brooklyn still speaks to his grandparents. One of the big headlines from this piece? Victoria and David call Brooklyn “the hostage” (which we knew) but Victoria apparently has an “unprintable” nickname for Nicola. What the actual f–k.
Victoria & David’s miscalculations: Estranged son Brooklyn’s bombshell reckoning with Brand Beckham last night was made inevitable, I’m told, by an unhappy Christmas filled with briefings against him and his wife by his own family. That’s the view of the Peltz-Beckham camp, who say that David and Victoria made a series of ‘idiotic miscalculations’ after privately going to war with their son’s wife, Nicola, after the couple wed three years ago. ‘They just didn’t stop. They just kept pushing and pushing it. Brooklyn didn’t want to do this, but in the end he thought screw it,’ says a source.
Brooklyn could reveal even more: ‘The biggest problem for the other side,’ says my source, ‘is that there is so much more that Brooklyn can say if he wants to…The Beckhams kept on gambling that Brooklyn would never dare to speak. They just misplayed it because, one day, it was going to be time.’
D&V lied about Brooklyn’s relationships with his grandparents: A number of articles were published before Christmas bemoaning his estrangement from David’s parents, Ted and Sandra, and Victoria’s parents, Tony and Jackie. In truth, as the Beckhams’ side admitted after Christmas, he is in touch with both sets of grandparents. Though the contact is limited to texts and occasional calls – since everyone in the family is naturally upset by the feud – it was not true to say that he had cut them off completely, as briefed.
Victoria’s nicknames for Nicola & Brooklyn: Many will wonder whether having helped their son in the past excuses the Beckhams’ nasty behaviour towards Nicola, for whom Victoria has an unprintable nickname. Their nickname for Brooklyn meanwhile is ‘the hostage’.
Brooklyn hoped for an apology: As a friend of Brooklyn and Nicola says: ‘I believe that David and Victoria care about him, but this is not the way you try to win someone back.’ Brooklyn had been hoping for an apology. None came. Indeed, Brooklyn said yesterday that he doesn’t want to reconnect with his parents – a stunning blow.
Brooklyn & Nicola are still working with Matthew Hiltzik: It can be revealed that what finally tipped Brooklyn over the edge was a recent article which said not only that he wanted to reconcile with them, but had made ‘tone deaf’ overtures and sacked his crisis PR. The Peltz-Beckhams say that none of that is true. Matthew Hiltzik, a high-profile crisis communications specialist in New York, remains engaged by the young couple.
D&V have finally shut up: Today, those close friends of David and Victoria who have previously briefed about the rift are now saying absolutely nothing. That seems wise.
War footing: It can be revealed that even before Brooklyn’s surprise six pages of revelations on Instagram, his mother, the former Spice Girl turned fashion designer, had tweaked her social media settings so that only people she approves of can link with her. The upshot is that she cannot be tagged on stories about her estranged son. ‘She was on a war footing,’ says a Beckham source, who adds: ‘The Beckhams have a much bigger and better image than the Peltz family and this has not been a fair war. The Beckhams have been famous for so long and they know how to turn the narrative. This though is a major bomb – I’m sure Victoria will have been screaming.’
Victoria’s peculiar behavior: That friend hears that Victoria invited some of Brooklyn’s ex-girlfriends to her fashion shows and even offered to dress them. If true, it’s peculiar behaviour, and only guaranteed to make her son feel even more uncomfortable. This week, invitations went out to his brother Cruz’s 21st birthday, which will be a big event. It can be revealed that there was no invitation for Brooklyn. It seems that the family has given up on him by this point.
I’ve honestly been appalled by Victoria’s behavior in particular, although I could be guilty of the “blame the woman” thing too. Perhaps David is equally to blame, and it does not appear that David has tried to talk sense into Victoria or that David has tried to make separate overtures to Brooklyn and Nicola. But I will never understand how a woman can behave like THIS towards her adult son and his wife. Mother-in-law from hell. Miss me with the “but Brooklyn would be nowhere without his parents/they helped him when he was young.” Yeah, he was their kid, of course they helped him and raised him. And when Brooklyn fell in love and simply wanted some independence away from the Beckham smothering, they ruined his wedding, smeared his wife and told everyone that they call him “the hostage.”
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Nicola’s IG.
- WESTWOOD, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA – FEBRUARY 03: Brooklyn Peltz Beckham and wife Nicola Peltz Beckham arrive at the Los Angeles Premiere Of Vertical Entertainment’s ‘Lola’ held at the Regency Bruin Theatre on February 3, 2024 in Westwood, Los Angeles, California, United States.,Image: 843381196, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Brooklyn Peltz Beckham, Nicola Peltz Beckham, Credit line: Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Avalon
- WESTWOOD, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA – FEBRUARY 03: Victoria Beckham and Nicola Peltz Beckham arrive at the Los Angeles Premiere Of Vertical Entertainment’s ‘Lola’ held at the Regency Bruin Theatre on February 3, 2024 in Westwood, Los Angeles, California, United States.,Image: 843383219, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Victoria Beckham, Nicola Peltz Beckham, Credit line: Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Avalon
- "Lola" Special VIP Screening at the Bruin Theater on February 3, 2024 in Westwood, CA,Image: 906424985, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Nicola Peltz Beckham,Victoria Beckham, Credit line: Nicky Nelson/Wenn/Avalon
- David Beckham and Victoria Beckham attends “Victoria Beckham” World Premiere at the Curzon Mayfair in London, England. UK. Wednesday 8th October 2025,Image: 1044313212, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: NORESTRICTIONS, Model Release: no, Pictured: Victoria Beckham – World Premiere, Credit line: James Warren/Bang Showbiz/Avalon
- Sir David Beckham, wife Lady Victoria Beckham and parents Sandra and Ted arrive for a photograph after being awarded a Knighthood for services to Sport and to Charity at Windsor Castle, London, England, UK on Tuesday 4 November, 2025.,Image: 1050263592, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: Please credit photographer and agency when publishing as Justin Ng/UPPA/Avalon., Model Release: no, Credit line: Justin Ng/Avalon
- Sir David Beckham and Lady Victoria Beckham poses for,Image: 1050263647, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: Please credit photographer and agency when publishing as Justin Ng/UPPA/Avalon., Model Release: no, Credit line: Justin Ng/Avalon






















This woman is a straight up B. She really needs to knock it off.
And you know her “nickname” for Nicola starts with a C. She’s definitely a Monster In Law lolz.
My first thought too. Definitely CU Next Tuesday.
Yep. I am on Kaiser’s side here. This is not okay. And considering everytime I turn around on Reddit or Ask Prudence we have some woman telling us about how terrible her MIL is, I 100 percent believe that she’s doing this. And her husband just hard shrugged cause he wanted his knighthood which doesn’t matter at all.
By these accounts, Victoria and David are classic narcissistic parents. In their minds, their children’s lives revolve around them. Brooklyn’s only crime appears to be that he had a healthy desire to individuate as a young adult, and he wasn’t willing to triangulate his relationship with his wife by prioritizing his parents. In these kinds of families, weddings are usually a battleground and a theater. And now they still think they can bully him. If they’re not careful, he’s going to spill what he knows about their marital issues and cheating and significantly damage the one thing they truly care about: their fame.
100% correct, Beana. It’s almost like they’re doubling down. Their priorities are really screwed up as we see that their “brand” is more important than their relationship with their married adult son. This will not end well for the desperate senior Beckhams as more cringey info comes to light.
Nicola does remind me of a young Victoria 🤓 it will not be fixed, there is only space for one queen 🫅 in this family. Don’t they have thrones at there house??? David and Victoria think they are Windsors 🤣🤣🤣
I was saying the same thing in a different thread — Nicola looks like a prettier (and happier) Victoria.
Aside from both being brunettes, they don’t look alike, to me. Nicola is much prettier than Victoria Beckham was at the same age.
Victoria is looking pretty simian to me in the top photo.
I love her makeup products and I’m seriously considering not buying them anymore, her behaviour is so off putting. I had a meddling MIL when I was married. She was literally the other woman in the marriage and a veritable nightmare. My ex husband always defended her no matter what. The upside to divorce was I also got to divorce her. Go be with yo mama.
She really sounds like a jealous frenemy towards her DIL. She needs to grow up. She’s done irreparable harm here. Even if her son splits from his wife, he won’t forget the damage his parents caused.
what’s with this talk of calling husbands “hostages”? It is still done with Harry by derangers. Very sexist.
“Hostage” is wild language for a married adult man. So either Brooklyn has no free will and can be abducted by matrimony or his parents can’t accept that he chose a life they don’t control. Funny how the insult supposedly aimed at Nicola actually paints Brooklyn as a helpless nepo potato who can’t cross the street without parental permission. Imagine telling on yourself like that.
I mean the kid is only 26. Nepo he may be, but he’s not living in his parent’s basement. He may not be setting the world on fire but he seems decent and loving and he can cook. I love men who can cook! They are not helpless potatoes if they can feed you.
It reflects a very particular understanding of how sexual desire and romantic interest operate, in a man. If a man has indiscriminate sexual desire for women and acts out on them, regardless of his married status (as David Beckham does), he’s behaving like a “normal”/“real” man. But if he has sexual and romantic interest only in his wife, interest that overrides his obligation to subordinate himself to a higher authority (ie, his parents), then there must be something peculiar and potentially unnatural in his attraction. His wife must therefore have cast a spell on him to override his “normal” masculine instincts. He is “hostage“ to her witchy wiles.
The fictional Bunny from Sex and the City, treated her daughter in law Charlotte the same way. Super controlling over her son Trey. And she would make unwanted visits to Charlotte and Trey.
What is Victoria going to do when her other sons get married? This isn’t normal behavior and I find both the Beckham parent’s decision to feed the tabloids and briefing against their son extremely disturbing.
She doesn’t fancy the other two the way she seems to fancy/have fancied Brooklyn. I have not seen any photographs of Victoria draping herself suggestively over either of them or invading their personal space the way she did with Brooklyn.
I think she assumed her boys would marry WAG’s desperate to be associated with the Beckham name, and therefore easily controllable. Nicola is many things, but controllable isn’t one of them imho.
Victoria will hope for submissive daughters in law.
My mother was a narcissist. What happened with Brooklyn, happened with my brother. Right down to my mother inviting an ex girlfriend to Christmas dinner and seating her next to my brother.
Despite my father and I warning my mother not to create a Romeo and Juliet situation withy brother, my mother did. My brother left.
Ugh. I’ve been trying to avoid the mother-in-law from hell trope. But well, jeez. It was def icy. There was a lot of info here. The fact that “close friends of David and Victoria who have previously briefed about the rift are now saying absolutely nothing. That seems wise.” No sh-t. It’s wild that they’re strait up admitting how much the Beckhams have been briefing the tabloids.
And look, the young ones have been briefing mostly page 6 and People from what I can tell. But there’s something about using the British tabloids specifically that gives me the ick. Interesting that it was the briefing about the grandparents that set things off. And that they do actually have the same crisis manager. And I’m confused. Does VB have an upcoming runway and she’s invited Brooklyn’s exes fr?
Yeah, everyone was admitting they were briefing and I am shocked at how many people here the other day were like that’s not true. I think they thought they could bully him to leave her. What a weird family.
It seems like it’s pretty common knowledge within the BM that the Beckhams brief and have their favorite go-to journos. Which is not surprising. And look, it’s not like the younger ones aren’t briefing to People and probably page 6, which is Murdoch. And while I’m no fan of People mag, the British tabloids are just a whole other beast, they really are, and I cannot fathom briefing some of this stuff about your kid to them. It’s one of those things where it’s just like wow it didn’t have to go this way. But it is what it is.
Is it a British tradition to call men who love their wives, and think about their wives’ well-being, “the hostage”? I mean, isn’t that what the staff was said to call Prince Harry when he stood up for Duchess Megan?
I have no doubt that David and Victoria Beckham not only briefed the press but were also being advised by the tabloids on how to smear Nicola. They’ve used the same tabloid playbook that the British press uses against Harry and Meghan.
Wow just wow…. What a complete nasty circus the Beckhams are running. Sounds to me that Brooklyn was a hostage to his family and he broke free and now they are calling him a hostage to his wife! Sick family.
Either David is equally to blame or he’s a “hostage,” too.
As an adult that’s been estranged from her family for nearly a decade I recognize the patterns of enmeshment and control in his statement. It’s like death by a thousand cuts and I can sense and empathize with Brooklyn’s sheer exhaustion with the situation. Messed up families operate with same tactics regardless of income or political views.
Victoria Beckham is trash. Brooklyn should stay far away from!
At the bare minimum, I don’t think Victoria is in any position to judge anyone else’s marriage, even her son’s.
I have been estranged from my mother for 20 years (the peace was worth it, all that needs to be said) AND have an evil MIL so I have a few biases here. I also like to keep in mind we don’t actually know these people beyond this bizarre PR campaign both sides are waging against each other. They want the public to take a side so here’s my take. Nicola’s family are MAGAts (I’m Canadian and not politely, they can fuck all the way off) and I remember the articles after the wedding about how awful her and her family were to deal with. I also saw the documentaries on Netflix and the Beckhams live in a bubble of their own making and surround themselves with yes men and dependents for a reason. This is a bunch of dreadful, entitled, wealthy assholes fighting with other wealthy, raging, entitled assholes in public and there will be no winners. The wealth and influence held by all parties will ensure Brooklyn can be whatever he wants on his FIL’s dime, Victoria probably is a terrible MIL and hates this younger nepo baby usurping her in her sons’ life, Nicola and her family can be truly awful people who are actively working to destroy not only their own country but the entire world to further their own wealth and influence, and David can be pissed his son is working so hard to dismantle the image they’ve cultivated through carefully managed PR. All presented as entertainment to the public because why not?
100% this. Awful people all around.
Ugh, what an awful toxic set of parents the Beckhams are.
I remember listening to VB speak at a conference on women in leadership a few years back, she sounded totally FAKE, she had this ‘posh’ accent that was so obviously the result of years of elocution coaching, it sounded completely different from her voice just as she was becoming famous.
Not that the Peltzes are anything to look up to.
And no doubt neither Brooklyn nor Nicola are perfect either.
But in the dysfunctional sweepstakes here, VB and DB seem to be taking the top prize.
I knew my future MIL was gonna be a problem when she told me her nickname for my future BIL’s fiance- she said they (she and FIL) called her “pussy face” bc she didn’t wear underwear (I guess they saw her hooha)- my face must have registered shock bc the first thing that came to mind was, “what do they call me when I’m not around?” She tried to test my knowledge as an RN, tried to pit us against each other (the two DILs). Regulary told me I was too sensitive when I objected to things she said. Walked into the bathroom when my husband was having a bath *with* the toddlers. Walked into my bedroom and bathroom when I was showering (during which she got an earful of me singing the lyrics of “Kyle’s mom is a bitch” but substituting Kyle for my spouse’s name😆) and so much more. Ah, good times. She’s been dead for 14 years, thank Gaia.
TL;DR: I believe N&B. I had a monster-in-law of my own.
If this is true, especially calling her DIL nasty offensive names, it just shows how classless this woman is. She has everything but her and her husband are relentless. Look how he jumped through all those hoops for a knighthood. Nicola might be a spoiled rich girl but honestly, what has she done other than be privileged around other privileged people? Why is she so fixated on blaming her? I wonder if beyond the wedding, if that Tatler cover story on Nicola was a factor. All this nonsense about brand Beckham is so stupid. Sometimes a cold war approach is best.
This name will mean little to Americans but Bob Monkhouse was a popular TV comic in UK for years. When he was 21 in 1949 he got married and his mother showed up for the wedding in black then STONED the wedding car when they left to go on honeymoon!! SHE stopped talking to him for twenty years! This was her way of letting them know that he was too young to marry!
So they clearly hate Nicola. Ok, you’re wealthy, put some protections in place for your son, and just see where the marriage goes. Be courteous, treat her civilly. All this maneuvering and trying to exert their will on Brooklyn got them exactly where they are now, with them cut off and Brooklyn digging his heels in with the Peltzes. You would think they’d be smarter than this.
This.
‘Miss me with the “but Brooklyn would be nowhere without his parents/they helped him when he was young.” Yeah, he was their kid, of course they helped him and raised him.’
Kaiser, thank you. Years of reading this site has shown me that you and the team have some of the most impressive BS meters on the interwebs. I appreciate your PR knowledge for things like this. The reality is that, right, wrong, or indifferent, celebs are people who choose to make money off of public engagement, and they can be shitty parents regardless of what their publicist tells us. There are a ton of non-famous people who treat family this way, and watching VB get called out might make the controlling among us rethink their crappy behavior. The younger Beckham’s example could help people who are contantly manipulated break free.
Nicola’s family sticks by her, but they are part of the wealthy destroying the world order, so fuck them, too.
Forgive my ignorance as I don’t follow the Beckhams other than seeing occasional pictures of them. What did Nicola Peltz do to incur all this rage? To drum up this much toxicity, Nicola has to be really evil or something, or D&V have to be beyond petty and controlling. Can someone tell me the back-story? How did this begin?