David Beckham may be half of one of the world's most famous couples, but that doesn't mean he likes having cameras in his face 24/7. "It worried me and it made me nervous and it made Victoria nervous," the former footballer said of filming his Netflix docuseries Beckham (via Variety). "I hated almost every moment of making it…it was very difficult."
Speaking at the Royal Television Society conference in London, Beckham said it took him a long time to come around to the idea of a documentary, particularly because he "wasn't ready" to discuss his career in the immediate wake of retirement. But during the pandemic when documentaries "really exploded" (in Beckham's opinion) and he realized it had been ten years since leaving the pitch, he decided to give it a try. "As much as people think they know everything about us they don’t really and we don’t really let those doors open to our house," he said, but he knew it was "the right time."
Of course, Beckham emphasizing his own discomfort with the process is also a way to deter some of the criticism that the doc was a vanity project. Given that Beckham's own production company made the doc, could it really be an objective assessment of his life and accomplishments? Beckham would argue yes, given his choice in documentarian: "When I met Fisher [Stevens] I knew this is the man that will make me feel really uncomfortable and I knew I had to feel uncomfortable to make the documentary we made," said Beckham, adding that he didn't influence the process: "Through the whole documentary, from Day One I said, ‘I don’t want to see anything until it comes out.' … I didn’t go into the edit, I didn’t see any cuts, I wanted to let Fisher have that control. It took quite a bit of convincing to get him on board."
Succession actor Stevens corroborated Beckham's version of events in an essay for The Hollywood Reporter. "When I took the gig, as a condition of the job, I said to them, 'There is definitely some uncomfortable stuff, David. You guys had a very bumpy road in your marriage. I want to get into that. And I’m telling you, only do this film if we can talk about it,'" Stevens wrote. "And they said, 'Yes, yes, no problem.' Victoria was much more willing to just go there. She’s so smart and so funny, and people don’t know that. And then you watch the movie, you see why she’s put up walls, with what they said about her."
Former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham will get another chance at telling her story in her own doc, which the couple decided to move forward with because they "loved the results" of David's. “I’m really excited about this one because she is an amazing woman,” Beckham teased of the upcoming project. “She’s a strong, driven, passionate person who’s gone from being a Spice Girl to being respected in this industry, it’s very tough. She’s worked hard for 18, 19 years on her business and suddenly she’s having the success she deserves. … People are going to see her personality and her work ethic."
