The Cold War between the Beckhams and Peltz-Beckhams is now a full-blown, boots-on-the-ground battle. If you’ve followed me on this site at all, you know I’m a Beckham stan, I make no excuses there. I’m trying to be as unbiased as possible because whatever the nuts and bolts of the drama are, Brooklyn clearly feels like the family scapegoat. He plainly explains that he has anxiety tied up in this relationship. People can be entertaining celebrities and not-great parents; he could be an entitled dilettante. We don’t know these people. We analyse what they show us.

Brooklyn took it nuclear on IG stories yesterday and the posts need to be read in full. Here they are (tap to zoom):

Brooklyn's IG Stories

A whole f-cking mess. Brooklyn is calling out his mom mostly (which bumps up against  previous TMZ reporting that his relationship with his Dad was more strained) and again, there’s a lot of angst about their cursed wedding. Brooklyn says there was head table drama (the parents were not sat there, but two of the nannies were, one from each side) and the wedding dress issue comes up AGAIN.

I’m pausing to dig into this because we’ve heard so much about this dress and a lot of it seems like bullsh-t. Nicola had previously told media outlets Victoria “couldn’t do it” and let her know a few months after prep started; after the wedding, a “source” told media outlets that Nicola knows real designers and wouldn’t wear a Victoria Beckham gown. On the record, Nicola told British Vogue she worked with the Valentino team for a year. This does not line up with his “eleventh hour” claim.

Then there’s the dance: IF MARC ANTHONY CALLED VICTORIA THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE ROOM IT WAS HYPERBOLIC AND NOT HER FAULT!!! But there is no going back from saying your mom was inappropriate while you danced. That will stick in the pop culture archives. Was VB dropping it low? Like damn.

He also gets into David’s 50th birthday (Brooklyn says he wanted to meet them in private and was rebuffed; when they did decide to meet, Nicola wasn’t welcome so he didn’t go). Even the story about Victoria allegedly not supporting Nicola’s dog charity is a retread.

Brooklyn says it has been his parents making this public the entire time, but that doesn’t fit the way these stories were rolled out, which has usually been a negative story about the Beckhams, followed by a mild correction. There’s a particular story from May 2025 on TMZ that lays out a lot of the same grievances as Brooklyn’s posts. The “performative family” allegations, the wedding dress, David’s birthday (including them flying to London) and the dog charity are specifically mentioned, all in one story. The Beckhams are described as toxic and narcissistic. How did TMZ have such a detailed list of Brooklyn’s issues?

For a wedding that ended in a lawsuit (between the Peltzes and wedding planners), how is the dress and dance such a big deal? Maybe it’s because when the lawsuit started to gain traction, there was an uptick in negative stories about Victoria. (On a side note, the same wedding planners specified that the Beckham side was organized and easy to work with).

The wedding stuff is petty but Brooklyn’s overall message is devastating because he fully takes aim at Brand Beckham. For years, the British media has painted David and Victoria as a front, a couple together out of convenience (his) and thirstiness (hers). Brooklyn validates that idea, full stop. He maintains that his parents are image-obsessed and only want the photo op for social media. Again, this could be how he legitimately feels. The Beckhams maintain an image, obviously. And they have always said the family unit comes before their individual wants. In the documentaries, particularly Victoria’s, this was framed as work ethic; they are obsessive about success and the entire family is part of the work. They move together, which has always been their strength.

Brooklyn has benefited from that strategy. Since the wedding, his parents promoted his hot sauce and they showed up for Nicola’s film, Lola. He’s had several side projects, from photography to modeling. But really, there’s not much they can do to support his career at this point. And whatever the unspoken agreement was for tit-for-tat promo, he does not want to be in their orbit, revolving around their fame.

This story dump is coming after some escalation; over the last few weeks, there have been leaks about Brooklyn using a lawyer to liaise with his family and he blocked them on Instagram. PEOPLE also published a story shortly after his posts, with a source noting Brooklyn is ready to “speak his truth” and  a family member [of Nicola’s] had had enough and wanted to set the record straight last year.” (So, is that the TMZ story from May?)

This is where they lose some credibility because there are no babes in the woods here. Brooklyn has not been forced to speak and he has the means to hire the best PR teams.

The issue for the Peltz-Beckhams, from a PR standpoint, is that the Peltzes are very gross and that puts them at a disadvantage. At best people don’t know them, at worst people dislike them. They are billionaires from Florida, there is nothing less cool than that. It’s a huge contrast from the Beckhams, who have actually been on an upswing because of the documentaries, her fashion and beauty line success, his team ownership success, and his knighthood.

Brooklyn doesn’t just have a problem with his parents, though. He calls out his brothers, saying his parents send them to do their bidding. Cruz is 20 and the most vocal, that’s his generation’s language. Could he also be controlled, financially and emotionally, by his parents? Yes, but he could also be a 20-year-old who is ready to rumble. Romeo and Cruz might have a completely different relationship to their parents and be genuinely pissed. Siblings don’t always have the same childhood.

Brooklyn also said his mom brought his exes around, which is a direct reference to Kim Turnbull (it is unclear if they ever even dated, but were in the same social circle). For that, I’m a little on the “let it go” camp, like you were teenagers – who cares? You weren’t Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce.

But what Brooklyn is trying to show here is a pattern, as he sees it. And one thing I can appreciate is that he says it’s not his wife, it’s him. It’s his relationship with his family and his choice. He’s not using her as a shield. He is, as the kids say, saying it with his whole chest.

The Beckhams have not responded at the time of this writing. David was in Davos today and did not give an answer when reporters peppered him with questions about Brooklyn. You can see that video below.

IF David and Victoria actually do respond on the record, it will be a very short statement about family and privacy. The brothers, though, well, they might be teeing up an Instagram post right now. Cruz is a firecracker, I would not be surprised if we get receipts, proof, timelines and screenshots.

The comments I’ve read so far are very… charged, because like all celebrity gossip, we are imprinting our values onto it. Conversations about parental estrangement, fuelled by TikTok, are everywhere (this New Yorker story is from 2024 and Oprah recently did a special on it). There’s no common ground for this conversation because it is so coloured by people’s experience, not just with their parents but their place in the birth order, their age, their siblings, their culture. Online, both sides of the estrangement are aggressively supported by those in the same situation. Children want parents to respect their boundaries; parents feel like punching bags who are blamed for everything. There’s a lot of armchair psychology with no nuance. People are coming down hard on one side or the other and so much of it is based on our own relationships with parents or in-laws.

It’s interesting to see the way (mostly) woman are talking about Nicola and Victoria. The defense of Nicola is that it is sexist to blame her for the fallout, but in the same breath Victoria becomes the easy “monster-in-law” villain, the “boy mom” who is too attached to her son. People have, and still do, say sexist things about Victoria and it seems there’s a bit of a bias at play because she’s the mother-in-law and it is a very convenient springboard for people who don’t like their own mother-in-law. (That is not a small number of people.) This of course bleeds into ageism and body-shaming, from comments about her dress (it was fine, it is a reach to say there’s something wrong with a silver mother-of-the-groom dress) and general “well she’s always been awful” narrative. I am truly asking: based on what? The Daily Mail? Victoria and David both have pretty strong professional reputations and they both maintain a lot of long-term friendships.

Now it’s the fallout. In his quest for transparency, Brooklyn has made this the dominant story of his life for years to come. And the Beckhams will never shake this. Even if they reconcile, this will be the baseline. The real winners are the family estrangement TikTok content creators, the fake psychologists, life coaches, and uncertified counsellors who are going to live off this for the next while.

I do feel bad for the Beckham not mentioned: Harper, who is 14. She always seemed close with Brooklyn (they are 12 years apart) and now she has to go to school with people all up in her business. She won’t be able to go on TikTok for months. For the rest of this week, it’s all eyes on the Beckham Instagram stories.

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Attached: Brooklyn out with friends at the Sunset Tower Hotel the other day.

Brooklyn Beckham steps out with friends at the Sunset Tower Hotel on January 17, 2026

Photo credits: BACKGRID

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