Victoria Beckham sheds Posh persona, gets candid about eating disorder in Netflix doc

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Content warning: This communicative includes discussions of eating disorders.

When Netflix dropped its 2023 docuseries “Beckham,” Victoria Beckham stole the amusement with her British wit and viral Rolls-Royce moment. But the spotlight was inactive mostly her husband’s to relish.

The tables person turned successful “Victoria Beckham,” released Thursday connected Netflix. The three-part docuseries — helmed by Nadia Hallgren, who directed “Becoming,” the streamer’s doc astir Michelle Obama — follows the U.K.’s favourite honorary royal connected her travel from awkward theatre kid to popular icon to manner mogul. The documentary is bookended by and structured astir the Victoria Beckham Paris Fashion Week amusement successful 2024.

“It’s not astir him,” Victoria says, referencing her legendary footballer hubby successful the documentary’s opening minutes. “It’s astir me.”

Produced by David Beckham’s accumulation company, Studio 99, “Victoria Beckham” inevitably paints its eponymous taxable successful a flattering light, doubling down connected her characterization arsenic an “underdog” from a working-class family. But aft hearing, implicit the people of the docuseries, British broadcasters lambaste Victoria astir everything from her value to her naivety, it feels similar she’s earned it.

Concerned astir however a documentary astir her mightiness beryllium received, Victoria said she was initially hesitant to hold to the project.

“At first, I said ‘no,’ but past I took a spot of clip and I truly thought agelong and hard astir it,” the decorator said. “I person been truthful defined by erstwhile I was successful the Spice Girls, which was lone a four-year play successful my life, whereas manner I’ve been successful for coming up to 2 decades.”

“Up until recently, I was alert I was inactive warring the preconceptions due to the fact that of my erstwhile vocation and ever being mindful of the sound and conscionable focusing connected gathering the [fashion and beauty] brand,” she said. It was lone precocious that she felt that she could stock her communicative without it reflecting negatively connected her concern ventures.

While the docuseries dodges arguable topics similar David’s alleged affair, a imaginable Spice Girls reunion and the Beckhams’ rumored rift with their lad Brooklyn Peltz Beckham — who, dissimilar his 3 siblings, ne'er appears successful the movie — and his wife, Nicola Peltz Beckham, it does inactive uncover overmuch astir Victoria and her fraught narration with her Posh Spice persona.

Here are 7 takeaways from the Netflix docuseries.

Spice Girls Melanie Chisholm, Melanie Brown, Emma Bunton, Geri Halliwell and Victoria Beckham smile.

With the Spice Girls, Victoria blossomed

As a young miss increasing up successful Hertfordshire, England, Victoria didn’t person galore friends and her assurance suffered arsenic a result.

“I was decidedly a loner astatine school,” Victoria said. “I was bullied. I was awkward. I wasn’t peculiarly sociable. I conscionable didn’t acceptable successful astatine all.”

But becoming Posh Spice wholly altered however she perceived herself and was a captious measurement toward self-acceptance.

“It was the archetypal clip that I ever felt similar I belonged. All of a sudden, I was popular,” Victoria said. “My beingness would beryllium precise antithetic if I hadn’t met those 4 girls.”

From Posh Spice to WAG

Victoria is often credited for creating the improvement of WAGs (wives and girlfriends of high-profile athletes).

Shortly aft she joined David successful 1999, the Spice Girls disbanded, leaving Victoria without a cardinal facet of her identity: “We were similar a tornado, and past each of a sudden, it stopped.”

Lost without her pop-star persona, Victoria leaned into the relation of supportive wife. Her nationalist outings consisted of attending Manchester United games and buying for decorator apparel — ever successful presumption of paparazzi.

“I look astatine those pictures and I smile. But erstwhile I look backmost and think, why?” Victoria said successful the documentary. “I accidental determination was an constituent of attention-seeking, if I’m being wholly honest. It was astatine a clip erstwhile I didn’t consciousness creatively fulfilled, truthful it’s however I stayed successful the conversation.”

“I didn’t recognize it astatine the time, but I was trying to find myself,” she said. “I felt incomplete, sad, frozen successful clip maybe.”

A young Victoria Beckham sits with arms crossed.

Victoria battled an eating disorder

Mere months aft giving commencement to Brooklyn successful 1999, Victoria was pressured into weighing herself unrecorded connected Chris Evans’ amusement “TFI Friday” truthful viewers could spot whether she’d mislaid her “baby weight.” She laughed it off, but the acquisition traumatized her.

“I didn’t cognize what I saw erstwhile I looked successful the mirror. Was I fat? Was I thin? I don’t know. You suffer each consciousness of reality,” she said.

Unable to power what the tabloids said astir her body, Victoria said she controlled her value instead: “I was controlling it successful an incredibly unhealthy way.”

Victoria said that she ne'er confided successful her parents astir her eating disorder, nor did she ever talk astir it publicly. She archetypal opened up astir her restrictive fare and binge eating successful her 2001 autobiography, “Learning to Fly.”

“In the gym, alternatively of checking my posture oregon position, I was checking the size of my bottom, oregon to spot if my treble chin was getting immoderate smaller,” she writes successful the publication — though she denies having had anorexia.

At first, designers laughed Victoria off

Following the Beckhams’ determination crossed the pond to California, Victoria decided to earnestly prosecute her imagination of moving successful the manner industry. When quality broke of her vocation pivot, designers were skeptical.

And erstwhile her debut postulation got remarkably bully press, she was accused of passing disconnected her mentor Roland Mouret’s designs arsenic her own.

“Of course, there’s gotta beryllium a antheral down it. It couldn’t beryllium similar a silly small popular star,” Victoria said successful the documentary.

Victoria, who had been infatuated with manner since puerility and had spent astir of the Spice Girls’ covering fund connected Gucci dresses, refused to springiness up truthful easily. She enactment her caput down and kept moving until she earned her peers’ respect.

Anna Wintour is simply a Victoria Beckham fan

In 2009, Madonna wore a achromatic zippered formal from Victoria Beckham’s debut postulation successful a W Magazine photoshoot. Two years later, Victoria Beckham won decorator marque of the twelvemonth astatine the British Fashion Awards.

Even Anna Wintour admitted she had misjudged the popular star-turned-luxury designer.

“I deliberation we tin each beryllium a spot snobby successful the manner concern and think, possibly this is, you know, a broadside gig,” Wintour said successful the doc. “But Victoria was 1 that wholly proved america wrong.”

Victoria’s concern astir went under

Among the documentary’s astir shocking moments is Victoria’s concern spouse David Belhassen revealing that the decorator was spending $70,000 a twelvemonth connected bureau plants. (Plus different $15,000 annually for idiosyncratic to h2o them.)

That information goes a agelong mode successful explaining wherefore Victoria’s brand, portion mostly well-regarded, was heavy successful indebtedness adjacent aft years of concern from the designer’s husband.

“We were tens of millions successful the red,” Victoria said.

Once David reluctantly closed the bank, Victoria was “desperate,” she said. So she pleaded her lawsuit with Belhassen.

Flummoxed by the level of fiscal discarded and the dire concern Victoria’s marque faced, Belhassen initially resolved to archer Victoria “no.” Then, by chance, his woman wore a Victoria Beckham formal to day night; stunned by the prime of the garment, helium changed his mind.

“[Victoria] was precise emotional, and she told me, ‘I won’t fto you down,’” Belhassen said.

Women’s Wear Daily reported successful August that the brand’s gross deed $150 cardinal past twelvemonth and that it is present “on way for semipermanent profitability.”

Posh Spice is successful the past

Victoria said successful the documentary that she volition ever beryllium grateful for the opportunities the Spice Girls gave her.

“I person ne'er forgotten wherever I travel from. I’ve never, ever forgotten that Posh Spice is the crushed that I’m sitting present now,” she said.

But she’s besides known since the Return of the Spice Girls Tour, the legendary miss group’s reunion circuit that ran from 2007 to 2008, that her days arsenic Posh Spice are agelong gone.

“It was during that circuit that I realized I didn’t beryllium connected stage. It had been fun, but it wasn’t what I loved anymore,” she said. Fashion has been her absorption since, and she’s inactive bare for occurrence with her Victoria Beckham brand.

As Victoria tells David successful the last moments of the docuseries, “I’m arrogant and I’m not ashamed to accidental that I’m ambitious, and I’ve inactive got a batch that I wanna do.”

“I’m not stopping yet,” she said.