The Creative Arts Emmys happened a week before the Emmys broadcast this past Sunday. It was TIFF and Venice and NYFW and NFL Week 1 and US presidential politics all at the same time and some of what happened at the Creative Arts Emmys kinda got buried or didn’t get the coverage that it would have gotten had it happened on the main stage. Like the fact that David Beckham is now an Emmy winner for his Netflix documentary.
David wasn’t there to accept the award – it was director Fisher Stevens and other members of the team, including Becks’s BFF Dave Gardner. Here’s David with the trophy, eventually:
As we have seen, even before he became an Emmy winner, David’s had one of the most successful sports retirements of his generation. Sometimes pro athletes don’t know what to do with themselves when they’re not playing and training anymore. David, meanwhile, is running an empire that includes team management, products, and now production. Beckham, the documentary, was produced through Studio 99 and it was in that capacity that David spoke today at the Royal Television Society’s London Convention to talk about his own series and also the upcoming Netflix series that will focus on Victoria. When asked about whether or not Victoria has been “taking notes” from David’s experience with his doc, David joked:
“Do you know my wife? She is an amazing woman. A strong, driven, passionate person that has gone from being a Spice Girl to be respected in this industry which is very tough. She’s worked hard for the last 17, 18 years on her business and all of a sudden she’s having the success that she deserves. No one really sees what she does and the amount of work she does, she’s over everything — what people wear, everything that goes into her business she’s over every single piece.”
David had previously shared that both he and Victoria were “nervous” about his documentary because even though people think they know them, they have managed to keep a lot about their inner world private. According to David, Victoria had similar reservations about being the focus of the new doc:
“Once again, it was hard to convince her to do this but she was a big part of the process at Netflix… It’s an exciting time because she’s gonna do something that’s very special and people are going to see her personality and her work ethic.”
I’m curious to see how this will play. Because, if you recall, the most viral moment from Beckham was when Victoria claimed that she was “working class”, until David literally busted through the door and told on her. While the cameras were rolling. It was charming and funny and she rolled with it, but she didn’t initiate it – he did.
David’s documentary was a relitigating of the past, his playing career, his performance as a footballer. It worked because it repositioned what the audience had already seen, but in a new light, and as a result, it turned the camera around at the viewer, forcing them to revisit how they saw him and treated him at the time, widening the lens to give a more complete portrait of the situation. The result was, practically, an exoneration of the Beckhams, mostly David.
The focus of Victoria’s doc is her business. She cares a lot about her business, she believed in her business when so many others didn’t, including the tabloids, who would love nothing more than to see it fall apart – and believe me they keep trying. Will her documentary have the same approach as David’s and take us back to the beginning when she was just starting to build her brand? When everyone doubted her, didn’t take her seriously, and predicted it would be a flop? Will she share her frustrations from that time, her unfiltered reaction to the criticism? This is what made David’s doc so compelling. He was compelled to remember those times, his most controversial times. And the documentary skillfully, through his recollections, didn’t absolve him of his mistakes but also gave the audience the opportunity to appreciate that it must have been hard for him too. It would be so interesting to see that equivalent on Victoria’s side, particularly with her post-Spice Girls work and achievements. If, that is, she’s willing to go there.
Because, sure, there is a lot of performance that goes into being Victoria Beckham, but at the same time, there’s a lot of performance that goes into being a woman, period. Our world is more forgiving of men, more demanding of women, and even when those demands are met, the goal posts keep changing. The reason there’s artifice in Victoria is because she was forced to build it, as armour, for everything she’s experienced since the moment it was revealed that she was dating one of England’s most famous and promising athletes. Not just any athlete, but a footballer.
The truth, then, is that the audience will be a lot tougher on Victoria’s documentary than they were on David’s. She knows this, she knows it more profoundly that she’s probably ever let on. So the question is… how much will she let on?
Here's David at a Birmingham City v Wrexham game yesterday with Tom Brady and son Romeo.
