It’s the mother/daughter-in-law fight that’s had us gripped for the last few months. And last week, things took a turn for the dramatic after Nicola Peltz Beckham addressed the rift between her and Victoria publicly for the first time. In a joint interview with Brooklyn for Variety, Nicola, 27, gave a rather awkward explanation for how the stories started, saying it was due to her not wearing a VB dress for her April wedding, opting instead for a Valentino gown.
“I was going to, and I really wanted to. Then a few months down the line, [Victoria] realised her atelier couldn’t do it, so I had to pick another dress,” said Nicola. “She didn’t say you can’t wear it, I didn’t say I didn’t want to wear it. That’s where it started.”
And while her husband was keen to point out, “Everyone gets along, which is good”, a source tells heat that the mere fact Nicola has addressed the so-called rift has angered the Beckhams. They think it has only added fuel to the fire, as fans were left sceptical that Posh’s design house could fail to find the time to make her daughter-in-law’s wedding dress.
“The interview left David and Victoria open-mouthed,” we’re told. “They’re seeing it as an attention-seeking stunt, and they now need to figure out where to go from here. In Brand Beckham, the philosophy is that you stay silent rather than acknowledge, then the story disappears. That’s how Brooklyn was raised, so they imagine Nicola quashed any attempt from him to play it down, and that it was her publicist who was sitting in on the interview. But the last thing they want is to inflame an already toxic situation.”
Posh wore a dress to the wedding that took her atelier five days to make. She called it, “The first Victoria Beckham couture dress”, and said the bespoke fabric was flown in from Italy. And it seems her fashion prowess took over when it came to helping Nicola design a dress for her big day. “Vic just couldn’t help herself getting involved with the wedding planning, and she was constantly overriding Nicola and Brooklyn’s decisions,” our source explains.
“The plan had always been that Vic was doing the dress with Nicola, but she may have overstepped the line by making changes and telling Nicola to ‘trust her fashion expertise’. Things really soured when Nicola got her parents involved, and it was made very clear who was organising and paying for the wedding. It was like the shutters came down on the Beckhams.”
With Victoria’s atelier based in London, we’re told Nicola announced she didn’t have time to travel to the city and it wasn’t possible for Victoria’s staff to travel to New York – and thus the dream was over. “Victoria was humiliated,” our source reveals.
“Until that point, she’d done so much for Brooklyn and Nicola, setting things up for them, giving them contacts, introducing them to important people and often dressing Nicola in her brand. So, it was a total slap in the face for her. And, for a while, Brooklyn was caught in the middle. Victoria wanted to clear the air with him, but he was suddenly very defensive and there was a lot of talk about how he would be doing his own thing in the future, with references to ‘controlling his own career’.”
In the interview with the newlyweds, 23-year-old Brooklyn spoke about his passion for cooking, saying he’s “100 per cent self- taught”, and admitting he was sad to give up playing football, as well as dismissing his brief photography career as a hobby. “They were kind of all hobbies,” he stated. “I was still trying to find that one thing I would literally die for, and I found that with cooking.”
As well as revealing he wants to run his own pub and launch “sauces, knives, pots and pans”, Brooklyn and Nicola also divulged they were keen to have lots of kids in the future. While Nicola said it won’t be “anytime in the next year”, Brooklyn confirmed they will be excited to have “little Peltz Beckhams running around”. And Brooklyn seemed to make a point of the newlyweds’ joint surname, which is also believed to have ruffled his parents’ feathers.
“We had this idea – we kind of combined our last names,” he said in the interview. “I was just like, ‘Oh, we could start a new thing’.”
While Victoria and David congratulated Brooklyn and Nicola on Instagram following their nuptials, they both referred to them as “Mr and Mrs Beckham”, which some interpreted as a snub to the couple. In fact, the usually gushing parents seemed reserved when sharing news of Brooklyn’s magazine cover stardom, with both simply writing “looking good” to their eldest son on their Stories.
Our source tells us the Beckhams have tried repeatedly to keep Brooklyn and Nicola onside, but to no avail. “They’ve tried on several occasions to invite the them to things – they invited them to celebrate their wedding anniversary this summer and to join them on their Mediterranean yacht trip, to dinners… Brooklyn just always responds that they are busy.”
Last week, a usually-composed Nicola shared a post to Instagram that suggested she’d been crying. She wrote, “We all have days where people make you feel bad and it’s OK to be hurt by it. I just thought I would write something because I never show this side of me here. I wanted to show this side of me. I love you all so much and truly appreciate all of your support. It means so much when you guys are kind on my page. I want you to know I see you, I hear you, and it means a lot to me.”
Our insider tells us a conversation with her in-laws may have been a contributing factor to the emotional post. “David and Victoria feel that, for all her talk over how they are controlling parents, Nicola is calling all the shots and Brooklyn is too worried about upsetting her to go against her. They wanted to talk to him and express how worried they were, but now he’s basically living in her parents’ home, they feel like there is no neutral ground.”
And now we’re told the Beckhams are worried they’re close to “losing” their firstborn. “They’re really upset over the whole situation with Brooklyn and want to make amends. They just want the chance to sit down with Brooklyn and talk to him, and to start getting back to where they were. They have no idea how it got this out of hand, and why it went from silly drama to a family feud. They really are at a loss and feel like they have suddenly been pushed into something toxic where no one has told them the rules.”