David Beckham and director Fisher Stevens team up to tell the renowned soccer player's story in BECKHAM.
Few professional athletes can boast the longevity of success that has been David Beckham’s experience over the last three decades. Entering the soccer scene in the nineties as part of Manchester United, Beckham grabbed the attention of fans around the world with his remarkable skill on the pitch as well as his dynamic personality. By the end of that decade, he was married to one of the most famous women in the world — Victoria Adams of pop supergroup the Spice Girls — and representing England at international soccer competitions. In the 2000s, he moved abroad to play in European and American leagues. Today, the now-retired Beckham not only owns Inter Miami FC, but is also raising four children alongside Victoria and has recently been inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame.
It is an impressive life to have led and a daunting one to distill across a four-episode documentary series, but Beckham isn’t one to back down from a challenge. To create a show that honored all he and his family had been through, the athlete had to find a director he could trust to tell his story fairly and push him into uncomfortable conversations he’d never had publicly. He found that partner in Oscar-winning documentarian Fisher Stevens. “The moment I met Fisher, I knew this was the person that I wanted to tell the story,” says Beckham. “He came at it from a different perspective than anyone else.”
The series was enjoyed by millions around the world who then connected on social media to reminisce over Beckham’s best goals and participate in challenges to see if their connection with their partners is as strong as David and Victoria’s when they share a dance to “Islands in the Stream” in the final episode. Stevens and Beckham recently spoke with broadcaster Cari Champion about their lighting-in-a-bottle documentary series.
An edited version of the conversation follows.
A young David Beckham
Cari Champion: Why did you want to tell David Beckham’s story?
Fisher Stevens: Well, originally I didn’t. I basically went to work one day on Succession and I went up to the showrunner, Jesse Armstrong, and Tony Roach, the executive producer, and I said, “Guys, what do you know about David Beckham? I got a call from his office. They’re interested in me directing a film on him. I don’t know much about him. I love football, but I started getting into it kind of around the time David went to Spain.” And they said, “David Beckham is brilliant and an amazing player. He kind of changed football, and he’s changed the culture. So you’re a fool if you don’t take the opportunity.”
Why was it so important to tell the story of the culture he created and was a part of?
FS: We were making a [series] about David Beckham. It’s not about football; you don’t have to know anything about football. You don’t have to know anything about David Beckham, but you’re going to learn a lot about what David did, what he and his wife meant culturally. Because it’s not just the nineties, it’s the aughts, it’s the teens. We wanted to make a time capsule that people will relate to today and that remains relevant. Our goal was to make a cultural piece because David is one of the most culturally important people of our century.
David Beckham and Teddy Sheringham
David, why did you decide this was the time in your life when you’d be willing to open up?
David Beckham: In all honesty, when I retired 10 years ago, some of my friends and family started to ask me about a documentary. And I said to them, “I’m not ready to look back yet. I’ve retired from playing, but I want to jump into something else.” And at that point, I wasn’t ready. [Later] I said, “Well, maybe we should look at the 10-year anniversary of my retirement.” So we started to talk and think about it. And it just felt like the right time. It took me a long time to come to terms with doing it. It wasn’t something that I thought straightaway that I wanted to do. Even after a few years, I still questioned if I wanted to do it.
FS: I think he questioned it while we were doing it.
DB: I definitely questioned it while we were doing it. It was a big decision because to have lived through my career and everything that came with that, and then to talk about it . . .
it’s quite hard for me to even talk about now because I get quite emotional.
Was there ever a point where you’re like, “I don’t want to discuss this, I’m going to turn the cameras off right now”?
DB: No, because I trusted [Stevens]. I always said to Fisher that I’m only going to do this once, and I’m going to do it properly, and nothing’s off the table. And anything you want to ask me, we’re going to talk about it, and we’ll get there in the end. Finding the right person to go through my life story was a big thing for me. He looked at my life in a different way than anyone else did. It wasn’t just about football, it wasn’t just about me being married to a Spice Girl. It was the cultural side.
The biggest thing that he did was to make me feel uncomfortable. We needed that. I think I needed to feel uncomfortable to get what he needed for the documentary. And I’m not going to lie, I didn’t enjoy the process. Every time that I saw a five-hour session with Fisher in the diary,
I did everything possible to get out of it. But it was incredible. Every time that we sat down for those five hours, I needed to go away for another five hours just to be on my own because it was just so hard, so uncomfortable.
David Beckham
Was it therapy for you in that way?
DB: I grew up in an era where mental health wasn’t really talked about. And I suppose the one thing that I take from this documentary is how important mental health is. Because 20 years ago, people weren’t talking about [it]. And now, thankfully, people can talk about it. I wouldn’t say it gave me closure because I still feel pain from those moments, but it made me feel better about them.
The reason I wanted to do the documentary is because I wanted something for my family to have to celebrate what we’d all been through together. Because my parents, my grandparents, my sisters, my friends had all been through that, and I hadn’t realized how it had affected them until
I saw them talking about it in the documentary.
I watched it for the first time at eight o’clock in the morning on my own on a big screen. And I was like, “I can’t process this.” Then I sat with Victoria and said, “I’m going to need you to watch this.” I trust her with everything. We watched it on an iPad in bed. And at the end of those first two episodes, a very rough cut, we were exhausted. [Seeing] what we had done in those last 20 years was exhausting. But then we laughed, we cried. It was just an emotional journey.
FS: The worst thing for filmmakers is when they have to show the subject the movie for the first time. You’re waiting for that response. It’s exciting, but you’re so nervous.
DB: He stayed quite calm with me throughout the whole process. There was only one time, and I remember it because it was quite a moment. It was Victoria’s first day filming, and she was sitting there in the lounge. And Fisher thought that I had left the house, but I was in the kitchen making coffee. All of a sudden I heard my wife go, “Well, we are down to earth.” And I was like, “No, no, no, no.” Literally, as soon as I heard her say, “We are working class,” I stuck my head in and I was like, “Be honest.” And apparently, he was very angry with me over that.
FS: Well, we scheduled the interview with Victoria because David was supposedly out for the day and she could be free to say what she wants. And then he showed up and I was quite upset. But it actually turned out to be brilliant. I mean, thank God the cameraman caught David [saying that]. I did say, “I think we have some gold here.”
David Beckham
David, when you put this documentary together, did you have something in your mind that you wanted to let the audience know about you?
DB: I think especially in the U.S., whether it be in L.A. or New York or Miami, people will come up to me and say, “We loved you as a player. We did not know that story.” I think that’s probably one of the good things that came out: People got to either relive the great moments or find out about what happened throughout my career.
We sat down at the start of this and Victoria said, “Just don’t make it just about football. Please. For people like me that love watching documentaries, make it about more than football.” I think that that’s what we all wanted to achieve.
FS: It was a dream. It was a dream team. And the thing is, I’ve made a lot of documentaries, and I’ve never had more fun in an edit. The life that David led was so rich. It was a constant discovery, up until the end when I hopped on a plane with basically a camera in my hand to get Messi’s first game in Miami. And I mean, it just keeps going.
