Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images
As an uncultured American with no relationship to the world of “football,” the new Netflix docuseries Beckham has given me a cursory education about the passionate, sometimes terrifying fan culture surrounding the sport. It’s also given me a more complex portrait of David Beckham; growing up, I had mostly understood him to be a Very Hot British Man. I was also reminded of his high-profile marriage to Posh Spice, a.k.a. Victoria Beckham, in every magazine I flipped through.
Still, despite all the interesting facts I discovered about Beckham’s public and private life—the kick, the sarong, his obsession with tidiness—I found the portions of the doc featuring his longtime spouse, Victoria, to be the most compelling and downright amusing. Obviously, there’s the now-viral scene of the fashion designer trying to assert that she grew up in a working-class household before admitting that her father drove a Rolls Royce. There’s also her refreshingly honest admission that watching David play football, even in the most pivotal moments of his career, hasn’t endeared her to the sport. The internet has also spent the past week revisiting the bold, often ridiculed fashion choices she and David made as a couple, including their very random but somehow perfect Barney-purple wedding looks.
In the wake of renewed conversations around Victoria’s iconic-ness, I couldn’t help but experience flashbacks to her NBC reality special, Victoria Beckham: Coming to America. Despite completely missing the Spice Girls boat (I was born the same year as their debut album), I somehow managed to catch this delightfully unserious hour of television on a random weeknight in 2007. I mostly just remember the fashion icon getting her drivers’ license and meeting the omnipresent blogger-villain Perez Hilton. But seeing her dry humor and overall fabulousness on display in Beckham made me want to revisit the stellar one-off episode.