Culture

Ever since they began dating in 1997, former soccer great David Beckham and wife Victoria “Posh Spice” Beckham have been under the red-hot tabloid spotlight. And never was the scrutiny more intense, and more potentially damaging to their relationship, than during the footballer’s rocky four-year tenure with the Real Madrid football club that began in 2003.
The former Spice Girls member reveals just how taxing that time was in the final episode of the new four-part Netflix documentary series Beckham, which both charts the English legend’s rise to fame during a legendary two-decade career, as well as the rocky times in his high-profile marriage to the former pop star/model.

“This was a time when anything he touched turned to gold. I remember saying, ‘You would love to get in the bath, but you can’t because every time you go to get in the bath the bloody water parts and you just walk on straight through,’” Victoria says at one point of the Messiah-like status her model-handsome husband enjoyed in the early 2000s in the series that dropped on Wednesday (Oct. 4).

Cut to a Spanish reporter asking David, “‘Do you think you’re losing out a lot because you’re married? All these women who love you, throw their [underwear] at you?,’” while an English chat show hosts asks the equally pulchritudinous singer — and then mother of their two eldest children — if she was concerned about all the women “throwing” themselves at her husband.

Dogged by allegations of David’s infidelity in the British tabloids, David says, “there was some horrible stories that were difficult to deal with” after his transfer, adding that it was the first time the couple had been put under that kind of pressure in their marriage. When the interviewer asks Victoria if that was the hardest time in their marriage, she swiftly responds, “100%. It was the hardest period for us because it felt like the world was against us.”

Worse still, she adds, it felt like “we were against each other if I’m being completely honest.” Until the Madrid transfer, she says it was like “us against everybody else. But we were together, we were connected.” But in Spain, that connection felt broken. “When we were in Spain, it didn’t really feel like we had each other either. And that’s sad,” she says. “I can’t even begin to tell you how hard it was and how it affected me.”

Alone in a new city where he didn’t speak the language, David says the move to Madrid was disorienting, with Victoria struggling to even describe how hard it was on their family as they confronted a fresh hell every day. “It felt like we were not losing each other, but drowning,” he explains.

“It was a nightmare. From the minute we opened the door in the morning, the press were there in cars and everywhere we went, we would get followed,” Victoria says of the time that her husband still can’t quite figure out how they survived. The scrutiny expanded outward to the pair’s children, whose morning commutes to their primary schools were blown up into mad tabloid scrambles that included rude comments shouted at son Brooklyn about his parents. “It was an absolute circus — it’s really entertaining when the circus comes to town, right? Unless you’re in it,” Victoria laments.

Saying his wife is “everything” to him, David recalls that seeing Victoria upset at the attention was incredibly difficult. “But… we’re fighters and at that time we needed to fight for each other. We needed to fight for our family,” he says on the verge of tears, noting that sometimes he didn’t know how he would even walk onto the pitch and pretend that everything was okay whilst feeling “physically sick” every day at work.

“Did I resent David? If I’m being totally honest, yes I did,” Victoria says. “It was probably, if I’m being honest, the most unhappy I’ve ever been in my entire life.” How bad was it? When Victoria was scheduled to give birth to their third son Cruz in February 2005, David said he didn’t think he could be at the hospital because he had a photo shoot… with Jennifer Lopez and Beyoncé. “‘Are you kidding me?’” Victoria, who was on bedrest and “about to burst” remembers saying to her husband.

Not feeling her most beautiful after the scheduled c-section, Victoria says she woke up the day after to a tabloid headline that read “What Will Posh Say?” alongside a “gorgeous” picture of Becks with the two superstar singers. “Let me tell you what Posh would say! Posh was pissed off!” she says.

The couple who married in 1999, have four children, daughter Harper (12), Cruz (18), Romeo (21) and Brooklyn (24).

The episode also gives viewers a glimpse at the the soccer player’s immense color-coordinated closet and his week’s worth of pre-selected clothes on a rack, as well as the jubilation that erupted after he won the La Liga championship with Madrid in his final season in 2007. The second half of the episode focuses on Beckham’s game-changing transfer to the Los Angeles Galaxy team that somehow made him an even bigger star and helped boost soccer to true major league status in the United States.

That move also included an Oscar-worthy “Welcome to America” party at the LA. Museum of Contemporary Art in 2007 that was thrown by pal Tom Cruise and Will Smith and which was attended by Jada Pinkett Smith, Katie Holmes, Tyrese, Ron Howard, Brooke Shields, Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, Eva Longoria, Bruce Willis, Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy and Friends‘ Matthew Perry, among many others. The night famously included Cruise re-creating his Risky Business dance and Stevie Wonder singing “Happy Birthday” to the guest of honor.