Brooklyn’s Instagram bombshell tested decades of image control, revealing how fame, PR and power collide behind the scenes
On a personal level, it’s all extremely sad. A once close family ripped apart by feuding and bitterness. A much-loved son blocking all contact with his parents and siblings.
From another perspective, however, for those who have followed the movements of David and Victoria Beckham in their 30 years in the (carefully curated) spotlight, the public falling out this week of Britain’s alternative royal family has been a car crash from which it is hard to look away.
After months of bubbling bad blood between the Beckhams on one side and their eldest son, Brooklyn, and his wife, Nicola Peltz Beckham, on the other, fed by briefing and counter-briefing on both sides, Brooklyn finally dropped a bomb on Monday by releasing an 821-word statement on his Instagram page.
“I do not want to reconcile with my family,” he wrote, laying out his reasons via a succession of unhappy and at times faintly farcical accusations about his parents’ alleged wrongdoings, which included Victoria pulling out of designing her daughter-in-law’s wedding dress “at the 11th hour” and hijacking the first dance at their wedding to “dance very inappropriately on [sic] me”.
