Brooklyn Beckham is airing his family’s dirty laundry.
Rumors have been swirling since the 26-year-old eldest son of David and Victoria Beckham married heiress Nicola Peltz nearly four years ago that there was tension between the young couple and his family. Beckham put the speculation to bed once and for all on Monday with a shocking Instagram post that essentially confirmed all the speculation was true – and maybe even worse than previously imagined.
On Tuesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Britt Mayer, host of The Britt Mayer Show, and Will Witt, author of Do Not Comply, to discuss the shocking accusations and what it says about family dynamics.
The Shocking Post
In a series of Instagram Stories posted Monday, Beckham accused his parents of leaking stories to the media, trying to control him, and attempting to undermine his marriage, among other scathing allegations.
Beckham began the six-part post by stating he “do[es] not want to reconcile with my family.” Instead, he was “standing up for myself for the first time in my life” and taking the opportunity to tell his own story. “For my entire life, my parents have controlled narratives in the press about our family,” he wrote. “The performative social media posts, family events, and inauthentic relationships have been a fixture of the life I was born into.”
The aspiring photographer-turned-amateur chef-turned-hot sauce entrepreneur went on to address several of the media reports that have surfaced about him, Peltz, and his parents since their April 2022 nuptials.
He accused David and Victoria of “trying endlessly to ruin” his relationship with Peltz since before their wedding, and he claimed the efforts haven’t stopped since. “My wife has been consistently disrespected by my family, no matter how hard we’ve tried to come together as one,” he wrote. “My mum has repeatedly invited women from my past into our lives in ways that were clearly intended to make us both uncomfortable.”
As reports have indicated, Beckham said his mother “canceled making Nicola’s [wedding] dress in the eleventh hour… forcing her to urgently find a new dress.” He also alleged his “mum” called him “evil” for choosing to sit with his and Peltz’s widowed grandmothers during their reception while putting their parents at adjacent tables.
He then added some additional color to a story that has been making the rounds about the couple’s first dance:
“My mom hijacked my first dance with my wife, which had been planned weeks in advance to a romantic love song. In front of our 500 wedding guests, Marc Anthony called me to the stage, where in the schedule was planned to be my romantic dance with my wife but instead my mum was waiting to dance with me… She danced very inappropriately on me in front of everyone. I’ve never felt more uncomfortable or humiliated in my entire life.”
Beckham wrote that he and Peltz subsequently renewed their vows so they “could create new memories of our wedding day that bring us joy and happiness, not anxiety and embarrassment.”
The oldest of four Beckham children, he accused his parents of valuing “public promotion and endorsements above all else” and said “Brand Beckham comes first.” In his telling, “family ‘love’ is decided by how much you post on social media” or “how quickly you drop everything to show up and pose for a family photo op.”
Beckham said he has “received endless attacks” – publicly and privately – from his parents and siblings since he started standing up for himself. “Even my brothers were sent to attack me on social media before they ultimately blocked me out of nowhere this last summer,” he claimed.
Finally, Beckham addressed reports that Peltz and her billionaire brood were pulling the strings and keeping him from his famous fam. “The narrative that my wife controls me is completely backward. I have been controlled by my parents for most of my life. I grew up with overwhelming anxiety,” he wrote. “For the first time in my life, since stepping away from my family, that anxiety has disappeared.”
Taking Sides
While Beckham was mostly responding to tabloid rumors that – whether planted by his parents or not – come from public interest in celebrity culture, Mayer said the intentional airing of dirty laundry feels unnecessary. “I get that they are celebrities, so things are a little different… but I have gone through stuff with family that was never made public,” she noted. “I think it makes the public uncomfortable because now the onus is on us to take a side, and we don’t even know what’s going on.”
Witt said he read the post as Beckham biting the hand that fed him now that he doesn’t need to bank as much on his own name. “I kind of look at it and I’m like, Is this kid gonna return all the money from his family? Is he going to give up everything that they’ve given him and all that? Or is he just going to come on social media and start crying about it?” he wondered. “It feels kind of like loser mentality, in my opinion, where he is coming out and saying this after all these years… Anxiety and stress… that’s all the rage now. Everyone wants to hear about how stressed you are because of all these things.”
To that point, Megyn said that, as a parent, she does have a “biased” opinion on the matter. “I think you should respect your mother and father… even if they are imperfect, even if they are doing things that bother you,” she said. “That stuff he wrote about Victoria Beckham at the wedding was meant to humiliate her, and I’m sure it did. I’m sure she was mortified.”
She believes the situation calls for grace. “I trust whatever she’s doing, she’s doing it out of a deep, profound love for her son. She’s maybe not behaving that well… but she seems desperate to have her son in her life,” Megyn added. “I would hope a child would remember that and – even though he is madly in love with the new wife and maybe there is some friction there – keep some grace there for the mother and father who raised him and obviously adore him.”
A Word of Warning
With that in mind, Mayer said Beckham’s description of “Brand Beckham” can serve as a warning for families in today’s social media world. “I have even seen small social media accounts cute homeschool moms do that where I don’t know if you fully understand that you’re creating a brand versus a family, and you’re having your kid play a part to fit them into this picture,” she noted. “And I think that is the lesson in all of this, even for us normal little moms, is just to be careful about how we represent our families and our kids.”
“We also need to think ahead,” Mayer added. “Our kids will live on the internet forever. They live with the images that we push out, and I think it is a caution to not make your child your brand.”
Megyn agreed and said it is why she has never shared pictures of her children publicly. “I never felt it was important enough to have strangers tell me how cute my kids were to sacrifice their privacy, their anonymity, and their right to grow up without the public lens on them all the time,” she shared. “Obviously, things were different in the Beckham family, and you can feel this kid’s resentment.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Mayer and Witt by tuning in to episode 1,234 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.