Brooklyn Peltz Beckham gives a proud little laugh when he turns to his wife and says: ‘I’m a pretty good husband.’
He adds that the best life advice he has ever been given is: ‘The most important thing that someone can do is to find that “person for life”, because they really change everything.’
Those words were recorded back in April, in a video shot to accompany a just-published interview in Glamour magazine. But six weeks later, how revealing they are.
His marriage to heiress and actress Nicola has indeed ‘changed everything’ for Brooklyn – as it has for his parents Victoria and David, with their eldest son failing to attend any of the events for his father’s 50th birthday last month.
And amid the continuing fallout from their feuding – three years after it was first revealed by this newspaper – it is clear that Brooklyn, 26, has now cast himself as the ‘wife guy’, someone who does everything as a tribute to his spouse, and that the Brooklyn/Nicola partnership is his new brand.
Much as his parents did from the time of their wedding in 1999, he and Nicola, 30, are using the medium of a fashion photoshoot to cement their status as a hot couple.
With Brooklyn bare-chested in Glamour and Nicola leaning in to hook a proprietorial finger around his belt loops, they appear to be taking a leaf from his parents’ media playbook.
‘Love Rules’ runs the cover line of the magazine. Inside, Nicola pouts, smoulders and drapes herself over her tattooed husband in poses which – consciously or not – very much ape what Victoria did with her bare-chested footballer back in the day. David and Victoria did a shoot with Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair – her in a ballgown and him stripped to the waist, following their wedding in 1999.
Brooklyn Beckham on holiday in Saint-Tropez, with his ‘mamma’s boy’ tattoo on show over his heart
Brooklyn and Nicole on the cover of Glamour Magazine
Since then there have been regular shoots with one or other half of the couple in underwear for various leading fashion photographers.
There’s nothing new in the declared devotion between the younger couple: Brooklyn has always been deeply, soppily committed to Nicola in interviews and on social media, and in the tattoos which cover his body.
Some 70 of his 100 inkings are devoted to her and her family, including her now-deceased grandmothers. However, one of the most significant revelations in the Glamour profile is that Brooklyn has finally covered his 2018 tattoo which read ‘mama’s boy’ and ran over his heart.
That is now mostly obscured by a bunch of flowers, added at some point over the past year – the blooms seemingly based on his wife’s bridal bouquet. The tattoo update feels deliberate and symbolic. For the battle over Brooklyn – and whether ‘mama’s boy’ gets to grow up and put another woman first – has always been at the heart of his issues with his family.
A friend of Victoria’s tells me that the former Spice Girl has never wanted to accept Nicola’s primacy, and that this was at the heart of their issues during that fraught three-day wedding in 2022, and the fractious years since.
‘The two couples made it look good enough for Instagram, but it was never settled,’ I’m told. ‘Victoria dislikes Nicola intensely and it’s been war behind the scenes pretty much ever since the wedding. It’s always been a tug of war about Brooklyn, and Victoria has not wanted to let go.
‘Victoria feels he has been absorbed into the Peltzes and that his life is all about that family. It has caused resentment.
‘Even when Nicola and Brooklyn went out to Paris for Victoria’s fashion show, they stayed with her family because her mother likes to go to the couture shows.’
Brooklyn’s most recent photoshoot reveals his old tattoo – dedicated to Victoria – has been covered
Exhibit A in this narrative is Victoria’s alleged behaviour at the wedding, which was at the bride’s vast family home in Florida and at which the Peltz clan were front and centre.
There were some significant indications of status and allegiance on the day.
The bride wore three outfits, none of them by her fashion designer mother-in-law. She explained she had asked Victoria, but had been told that the atelier could not handle the demand.
She could, surely, have worn a VB trouser suit, but chose Dior instead. Her wedding dress was custom Valentino, and she wore a pair of new $1 million solitaire diamond earrings, a gift from her family. It all felt like a high-fashion flex.
In the same vein, the bride’s social powerhouse mother, Claudia Heffner Peltz, wore Versace and sported a necklace, the centrepiece of which was the fabled 95-carat Star of the East diamond, a museum-quality gem.
It made Victoria’s new 21-carat diamond pendant look like a trinket from Claire’s Accessories.
Away from the clothes and the rocks, the Beckhams were aghast to be sidelined on the day.
They weren’t on the top table – Nicola and Brooklyn sat with her many siblings and their partners in an arrangement which is usual in the US but unusual in the UK.
There was a very small group of Beckhams and their friends at the party, which prominently featured billionaire buddies of father-of-the-bride Nelson Peltz. Nobody paid much attention to the groom’s family, who are, of course, used to being the stars of the show.
Later in the evening, Victoria took a ‘first dance’ with Brooklyn when singer Marc Anthony performed, which was some time after the actual first dance for Brooklyn and Nicola.
The performance was the Beckhams’ wedding gift to the new couple. Singer Anthony apparently gave a long introduction about how wonderful his friends David and Victoria are and then introduced Victoria as ‘the most beautiful woman in the room’, which had the bride in tears.
I’m told that many in the room were crying by the end of that dance, and not happy tears either. The Beckhams’ side deny that Victoria stole a first dance from Nicola.
Those who are close to Brooklyn and Nicola say they are a sweet, committed young couple who have been very hurt by how they have been treated.
I hear they are ‘devastated’ at how the Beckham clan seems to have briefed against them over recent weeks, with sources saying they call Brooklyn a ‘hostage’ and regard Nicola as ‘controlling’ and ‘narcissistic’.
The Peltz Beckhams won’t hit back, but I hear: ‘If you hurt one of them, you hurt them both.’
There have been tears and a great deal of distress behind closed doors. However, they are facing the crisis together, as a couple. ‘Everything they do, they do together,’ says a friend.
As Nicola says in the Glamour magazine video, Brooklyn is her protector in this storm. ‘He’s very honest, he always has my back. He’s my best friend. He has the best heart. He always has really pure, good intentions,’ she says.
She adds of her husband of three years that his ‘love language’ is ‘words of affirmation’.
How wounding it must be then for this sensitive young man to lose the support of his family in this respect. For Brooklyn has idolised both his parents, and it has been painful to see him fail to measure up to their global successes in sport, music and fashion.
As a teenager, he played for Arsenal’s youth academy, but at 15 he left without making the transition to professional football. He said in an interview in 2022: ‘I have a lot of anxiety.
‘And to try to live up to what my dad did, it was just like, it got to the point where I was just, like, I really just want to make my own name for myself and work my a*** off. I’m a Pisces. Sensitive.’
His modelling and photography also didn’t stick, and wife Nicola has since said she thinks he was being guided in the wrong direction – by his parents.
His current passion for food has seen him following his own path, and he has been lucky to have advice from her billionaire tycoon father in launching a hot sauce brand, Cloud23.
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Nelson Peltz is on the board of Unilever, which makes Hellman’s mayonnaise, Knorr sauces and Colman’s mustard – you couldn’t hope to be taken under a better wing in the sauce ‘space’.
When Brooklyn set up the brand last October it was widely assumed that ‘23’ referred to his father’s playing number at Real Madrid and LA Galaxy, and only last week Brooklyn’s team described it as a ‘warm nod’ to his father’s jersey in promotional material.
But in this week’s Glamour interview he says not. ‘The 23 stands for our engagement date and my age back then,’ says Brooklyn. In this he is leaning away from Brand Beckham and into his status as a ‘wife guy’. Asked in an interview in 2022 if he was one, Brooklyn said: ‘Definitely, definitely. I mean this is definitely a woman’s world. And guys are just living in it. The girls are in charge.’
When Nicola was working on the Disney+ TV mini-series Welcome To Chippendales, he would drive her to the set early every morning. He still drives her wherever she wants to go. He also walks their four dogs every morning.
And as they move forward the couple seem to be deliberately steering clear of mentioning the Beckhams – but talking as much as they like about each other, and their love story.
In the Glamour interview, Brooklyn says he has a strategy for having a successful romance while in the public eye: ‘Don’t listen to all the nonsense. Keep your head down, work hard, stay friendly. There will always be people who talk. The important thing is that we’re happy together.’
He adds: ‘You have to marry your best friend, someone you feel at home with. For me, Nicola is exactly that.’
His wife says: ‘It’s not always easy. On TikTok there are always random stories popping up about us. When I see fake news, my instinct is to shut it down. But it’s not worth it. I just scroll past and move on.’
Brooklyn says he was ‘captivated’ by Nicola when they met at Californian music festival Coachella, even though they were both in relationships.
Of her first meeting with the then-aspiring photographer Brooklyn, Nicola said: ‘Our encounter was brief, but special.
‘I had a boyfriend, Brooklyn a girlfriend, but I immediately felt his charm. He took a few photos of me and stayed in my heart long before we really knew each other.’
He had known he wanted to marry Nicola after three months of dating and planned a romantic proposal with surprise visits from all her family, and a ring he designed himself.
Nicola says: ‘We were engaged for a long time because of Covid. We wanted a big wedding, but we also wanted to protect our grandparents. There were moments when we thought, should we just elope in Vegas? But people talked us out of it. When you’ve lived together for a while, marriage doesn’t change everything except that it feels really special to say “my husband” or “my wife”.’
Brooklyn agrees with her: ‘Same here. It felt weird saying “fiancee” for so long. I love calling her “my wife” now. Or “my missus”. It just feels better.’
The interview goes on to discuss their wedding day, with Nicola saying, some may think pointedly: ‘Someone gave us this advice and I’m so glad we listened: Take a moment during [your wedding] day just for the two of you.
‘Step away, breathe, be together. Those were my favourite moments. Weddings can be intense, especially when you’re busy making sure everyone else is having fun. That little break reminded us what it’s really about: us.’
Brooklyn added: ‘I totally agree. After the ceremony, find time to disappear for a second. We took a quick drive, just the two of us. It was perfect. Also, love each other, be honest, and always protect one another.’
None of which will be music to David and Victoria’s ears.