There is perhaps no greater love in a mother’s life than her firstborn child; the intoxication of that first smile, the tight grip of those tiny fingers, watching them flourish into adulthood.
How heartbreaking, then, that Victoria Beckham is so scarred by the war that has broken out between her and eldest son Brooklyn’s wife, Nicola Peltz, that she has glumly conceded to friends that she’s lost her son to a woman she’s said to have privately referred to as a ‘viper’.
It’s an extraordinary turnaround – and one that marks not only a deeply hurtful family schism, but also shatters the carefully curated Beckham brand.
As has been well documented, relations between the Beckhams and their eldest son and his wife are at rock bottom after the couple’s no-show at David’s various recent 50th birthday celebrations.
This despite an extensive period where all parties tried to patch things up following tensions that arose during the planning of Nicola and Brooklyn’s 2022 wedding.
In essence, it seems it all comes down to a struggle for Brooklyn’s affections between his doting wife – who is, according to those in the know, the ‘boss’ in the relationship – and his equally doting mother.
One long-standing friend of the Beckhams says: ‘Victoria is fairly open among her close friends about what a viper Nicola is and how she feels betrayed by Brooklyn, so the mask has fully dropped.
Nicola Peltz and Victoria were still close on Victoria’s 50th birthday last year
Victoria posted a picture of the family – with sons Romeo and Cruz but no Brooklyn – celebrating David’s 50th birthday
‘This is a takeover situation and it is all about the relationship between Victoria Beckham and Nicola. In some ways, Brooklyn has married his mother in Nicola.
‘Nicola is a very strong woman and she wants to build her own family brand.’
Which means removing Brooklyn from the sphere of influence of his parents, adds the friend.
Another source at the heart of the Beckham family has tried to play down the rift, saying: ‘It’s a family story and not an unusual one. There’s nothing to add.’
While undoubtedly there is a wish for the feud narrative to die down, nobody thinks at this point that a reconciliation is possible in the near future.
The long-standing friend reports: ‘David was a big peacemaker in the family and tried to make it right, but he is over it now. The feeling is that she [Nicola] has isolated him from them all.
‘Nicola is very confident – far more so than Victoria – and she is the top dog in the relationship. Victoria is not the top dog in the Beckham household, it all revolves around David.’
It seems there have been personality clashes between Victoria and Nicola, too, which haven’t helped matters.
As the friend reports about Victoria, who has a famously acerbic sense of humour: ‘Victoria has a killer wit and is very good with put downs. But Nicola isn’t funny and isn’t good on irony.’ This appears to have led to Nicola lashing out and making ‘lots of “old” comments like “When I get to 50” or “Oh my god, I keep forgetting you were around in the 1980s”. Needless, to say, Victoria hates this.’
As ever, somewhat perilously, family and fortune for the Beckhams are entwined. The friend reflects: ‘The difficult problem for the Beckhams is that rift stories hurt their brand, which relies upon togetherness and everybody dressing alike in Victoria’s clothes and being best friends.
‘But these latest stories don’t hurt the Brooklyn-Nicola brand. It’s the opposite. It helps them to be seen as an entity in their own right rather than just a satellite of Brand Beckham. Do you notice Victoria offers her satin slip dresses to all her female friends to wear to her parties? Nicola really doesn’t like that and refuses to play that game any more.
‘Nicola feels Brooklyn needs to grow up and move on. She doesn’t like it when he seems to try to imitate his dad with his tattoos and his lookalike clothes and hair, so he’s sort of changed his look.’
However, other sources say it is not the case that Brooklyn is being bossed around by Nicola. They are deeply and sincerely in love and – I’m told – move as one.
What’s more, if you hurt one, you hurt them both. They are, then, dismayed with the way they think the tensions over the wedding have been ‘weaponised’ and aghast at the torrents of unfavourable coverage which have come their way.
They say many of the allegations aired about bad behaviour over everything from the wedding dress to the first dance are simply ‘lies’. One said: ‘They won’t talk about what has happened in public, that is not their way, but they have been treated really cruelly. They are very sad. They have tried to mend the relationship, and they still hope they can, but at the moment it’s hard to see how it can happen.’
It is pointed out that the issue wasn’t Nicola choosing a different wedding dress designer – but Victoria telling her that she could not make the dress.
‘Nicola kept her mouth shut at the time and they both worked hard to mend relations,’ one source said.
‘What is happening now is so sad and hurtful but she would never disparage her family. It is really sad for them, they are family people and that is one of the things which brought Brooklyn and Nicola together, their love of family.’
As for their appearance, it’s notable that Brooklyn, who took Nicola’s surname to become Brooklyn Peltz Beckham, now seems to take pains to ‘twin’ with his glamorous actress wife, who is four years his senior.
At a show for Italian fashion label Moncler in March, they wore matching denim outfits. For Burberry at London Fashion Week a little earlier, they wore matching Burberry (Nicola has a deal with the brand). The last time she went to one of her mother-in-law’s fashion shows, in September 2024, the couple both wore Victoria Beckham tuxedos. At the Met Gala in 2023 they wore matching layered diamond and pearl necklaces.
The sartorial message is that these two are an inseparable unit… and that Brooklyn belongs to Nicola.
As she observed on Halloween, when they dressed as singers, he is the Sonny to her Cher. That’s one of many social media posts which Victoria has not liked.
This rebranding goes deeper than just fashion, though, and can be seen in the founding of the Peltz Beckham Foundation. This charity, with Brooklyn and Nicola as trustees, will carry out the dog rescue work which, up to now, Nicola has done via the Yogi’s House charity she set up with a friend.
Dog rescue is the cause closest to her heart and Brooklyn will be joining her in devoting his time to it. It’s no accident that the charity seems to be a mirror of her parents’ Nelson and Claudia Peltz Family Foundation, which her billionaire businessman father runs with her mother.
Brooklyn has joined in this worship of the Peltz family, with three tattoos honouring her grandmothers
Nicola Peltz with her mother Claudia. The family are thought to be worth £2billion
Mr and Mrs Peltz are both trustees and Nicola’s brother is the treasurer. The latest IRS filing for the charity suggests that it has £11 million in assets and has dished out £1.5 million in a year, with grants to 22 organisations.
Brooklyn and Nicola will be starting on a smaller scale, but it’s significant that the pair see a future in the philanthropic field – following in the Peltz footsteps.
Even Brooklyn’s sauce brand, Cloud 23, is another step deeper into the Peltz family as Nelson has considerable experience in food and condiments, and also sat on the board of Heinz, in which he had a huge stake. He is on the board of Unilever, where brands include Hellmann’s Mayonnaise and Colman’s Mustard.
Nicola has spoken about how she loves seeing Brooklyn ask her father for business advice, in contrast to his previous attempts to make it in football, playing for Arsenal youth until he was 16, and in fashion photography. Nicola blames these fledgling careers on David and Victoria pushing him in the wrong direction.
She told Tatler magazine he ‘felt a lot of pressure to please people with his career and he didn’t love it’.
Now, thankfully, he has a sauce titan as a father-in-law to help him. His brothers, in contrast, are toeing the family line: Cruz Beckham is trying his hand at music, like his mum, while Romeo, having been a footballer like his dad, is now in the fashion industry working as a model.
Another of Nicola’s apparent complaints is that Victoria has ‘patronised’ her, as she feels none of the Beckhams appreciate the social and economic significance of her family. The Peltzes are estimated to be worth £2 billion.
While David Beckham may be friends with chef Gordon Ramsey and actor Tom Cruise, Nelson Peltz is friends with the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and US President Donald Trump.
While David once bought a Tracey Emin Neon sculpture, Nelson has a collection of Renoir, Chagall and Monet. He also has two private jets and a helicopter.
Despite their combined £455 million fortune, the Beckhams do not have any private air transport: they hire. Neither, Nicola argues, do the Beckhams understand her devotion to her family. She missed Victoria’s 50th birthday party last year because she was spending time with her ‘Naunni’ – her grandmother who has since died.
And this week, as talk of the Beckham family raged, Nicola shared a post about her great love for both her late grandmothers.
Brooklyn has joined in this worship of the Peltz family, with three tattoos honouring her grandmothers, plus the name Peltz in calligraphy-like script across his chest. Nicola, meanwhile, who was brought up in the Jewish faith, has ‘Family first’ tattooed in Yiddish on her ribcage.
The youngest daughter of Nelson and his third wife, a former model, Nicola has eight siblings and two step-siblings, who range in age from 59 to 23.
She says: ‘Family is everything to me and I mean that with my whole heart.’ She adds that her parents have been together for more than 40 years and still ‘make out’ like teenagers. ‘Their love inspires me every day,’ she said last year.
Nelson built his family’s tiny frozen food business in Brooklyn into the largest frozen food distributor in north-east America. From there, he assembled the biggest packaging company in the world, Triangle Industries, which was sold in 1989 netting him around $840 million. He has in his time bought the iced tea brand Snapple and the burger chain Wendy’s.
Home is High Winds, a 130-acre spread in Bedford, New York, which used to belong to DeWitt Wallace of Reader’s Digest fame.
Features include a flock of albino peacocks which roam the grounds, a huge lake and waterfall, and a professional quality indoor ice hockey rink – all of his children, including Nicola, have loved playing ice hockey.
What’s striking is that despite the fact both she and Brooklyn were born into self-made and close-knit families, they seem to have reached adulthood with very different attitudes.
Now 26, Brooklyn is past the age his parents were – Victoria, 24 and David, 23 – when they had him. Victoria’s sweet online messages to her son each year on his birthday leave one in no doubt of how much she’s adored motherhood, a sentiment she’s passed down to her son who posted, after becoming engaged to Nicola: ‘I promise to be the best husband and the best daddy one day. I love you baby xx.’
Nicola and Brooklyn do indeed talk about babies regularly. But wouldn’t it be any parents’ worst nightmare to become grandparents at a time like this?
