Netflix
Think you know Victoria Beckham, the Spice Girl, football WAG, mum and fashion designer? Think again!
The release of her explosive eponymous three-part Netflix docuseries, which premiered on October 9, has revealed the truth about the woman behind the headlines few people really know.
Comprised of new and rare archival footage, along with candid interviews with her family and friends, the series offers an intimate look at Victoria’s life and many reinventions.
It follows the star while she prepares for the biggest runway show of her career: Paris Fashion Week.
Trigger Warning: This article contains discussion of eating disorders.
From struggles with an eating disorder to her incredible rebound from the brink of bankruptcy in 2016, the 51-year-old speaks candidly about her successes and failures.
Here, we break down the biggest bombshells from the must-see documentary that has everyone talking.
Victoria opens up about her eating disorder
While she’s never publicly spoken about it before, Victoria finally opens up about the struggle she faced with an eating disorder for many years.
“I wasn’t the best dancer, the best singer. I didn’t look like a lot of the other girls. That’s where I started getting a lot of criticism about my appearance, my weight,” she explained.
The more famous she got, splashed across the pages of magazines and newspapers, the more people felt the need to criticise Victoria for her appearance.
“I was weighed on national television when Brooklyn was six months old,” she reflected. “I really started to doubt myself and not like myself.
“I was just very critical of myself,” she added. “I didn’t like what I saw. I’ve been everything from ‘Porky Posh’ to ‘Skinny Posh’. It’s been a lot.”
Unable to fight back or control the headlines, the one thing she could control was her weight.
“I had no control over what was being written about me, pictures that were being taken, and I suppose I wanted to control that,” she said of her eating disorder.
“I could control my weight. And I was controlling it in an incredibly unhealthy way. When you have an eating disorder, you become very good at lying. I never talked about it publicly.”
The Spice Girls changed everything
Plagued by insecurity as a child, Victoria kept to herself, struggling to fit in – but on stage is where she flourished.
“I was definitely a loner at school. I was bullied, I was awkward, I wasn’t particularly sociable,” she admitted. “I just didn’t fit in, at all.
“But when you’re on stage, for that moment, you’re somebody else, and I didn’t really want to be me, I didn’t like me. I desperately wanted to be liked.”
Answering an ad to audition for a pop group in 1994, she didn’t think she stood a chance – especially when she sang ‘Mein Herr’ from Cabaret while everyone else chose pop songs.
Alongside Geri Halliwell, Emma Bunton, Melanie Chisholm and Melanie Brown in the Spice Girls, Victoria found lifelong friends.
She also found international fame, with the group soaring into the stratosphere with their debut single, ‘Wannabe’, in 1996.
“When people say, ‘The Spice Girls changed my life, the Spice Girls made me accept who I am and what I am, and how I look’ – they did that to me, too,” she admitted.
“All of a sudden, I was popular. My life would be very different if I hadn’t met those four girls.”
But as meteoric as their rise was, the Spice Girls’ demise was just as spectacular.
While they carried on following Halliwell’s 1998 departure, by 2000, they were on indefinite hiatus. In February 2001, they’d officially disbanded. Victoria was devastated.
“I went from being up here with the Spice Girls, being on tour, travelling the world … And then, all of a sudden, it stopped,” she reflected. “I found that transition really, really difficult.”
Solo career failure
Launching her solo singing career, she was unexpectedly met with ridicule.
“When people are mean … and you’re constantly made to feel you’re not good enough, that really hurts,” she said. “I became so self-conscious.”
With his own career thriving, David was unaware of just how much his wife was struggling, though he did notice her personality change.
“When I first met Victoria, she was smiley, she was bubbly, she was confident,” David, 50, said. “But that started to disappear.”
Victoria added, “People thought I was that miserable cow that never smiled, and they’re not wrong.”
Relocating to Los Angeles in 2007 when David signed to LA Galaxy was a much-needed fresh start for Victoria.
“As much as we’d moved to LA for my career, the focus was less on me, and it gave her confidence,” David reflected.
David bailing her out
It was in LA that Victoria finally fulfilled her long-held dream of making the transition from singer to designer with the launch of her titular fashion label in 2008.
“When I first started this fashion business … I knew what people thought: she was a pop star, she’s married to a footballer, who does she think she is?” she reflected.
Designer Roland Mouret took her under his wing and cultivated her dream, making it a reality.
While things got off to a promising start, by 2016, they were in deep financial trouble.
“Everything looked great from the outside. But the reality was, it was slipping through my fingers,” Victoria reflected.
For his part, David was concerned at how far-gone things had gotten.
“It made me panic,” he admitted. “I was panicked by it because I never saw anything coming back.”
“We were millions of pounds in the red – I didn’t know what to do,” Victoria added. “I felt embarrassed… I almost lost everything, and that was a dark, dark time.”
Not only was David her husband, he was now her business partner, and with her brand drowning in debt, it inevitably put a strain on their relationship.
“I hated it, I absolutely hated it,” Victoria said. “The entire house was crashing down.”
Where to watch Victoria Beckham?
All three episodes of the docuseries Victoria Beckham are now available to stream only on Netflix.
