Brooklyn’s most famous namesake is crossing six lanes of traffic at one of the New York borough’s busiest intersections, smouldering for the camera. It’s quite a scene, as Brooklyn Peltz Beckham strides along confidently, while Grazia’s team of photographers, stylists and assistants move as a unit around him, and Beckham’s manager runs alongside, carrying Beckham’s powder puff of a dog, Angel.
With a leather jacket slung over one shoulder, forearms covered in tattoos, the 25-year-old looks a lot like his father as he poses. Head dipped, eyes narrowed a touch, his expression is familiar from David’s many campaigns. Of course, Beckham Jnr has modelled before – just as he has dabbled in a few other careers. A dalliance with photography, at the tender age of 18, put him at the centre of a global discourse about nepotism. Beckham, an affable yet contained presence, well knows that he brings this baggage to his latest endeavour – the launch of a hot sauce range. He plans to create a line of condiments, followed by further cooking products and possibly a restaurant, under the banner of his company, Cloud23. ‘Up until now, people don’t really know what I do,’ he says, matter-of-factly, when we sit down to chat, Angel nestled at his feet. ‘I’ve been working on this project for three years now. And still, everyone’s like, what does he do? He doesn’t work!’
During lockdown Beckham was cooking a lot – he has always loved food, something he says he has long bonded over with his dad – and was ‘trying to figure out what I was going to do’ career-wise. His then-financé, now- wife Nicola Peltz (daughter of billionaire investor Nelson Peltz), suggested he take that interest public. He has since made hun- dreds of cooking videos and has done deals with various food-adjacent businesses, including Uber Eats. During much of this time certain tabloid papers and commenters have seemed eager to jump on any opportu- nity to eye-roll about his skills. (He tells me about a video he did with a chef: ‘We cooked this meat for like five hours. And all the com- ments are like, “Oh, it’s raw.” And he was just like, “I don’t know what they’re on about.” I mean, this guy worked in Michelin-star restaurants.’) Often the narrative has seemed unnecessarily harsh.
I ask Beckham whether he understands why the wider public can feel irked about nepo babies in general. ‘Yeah, of course,’ he says. ‘Obviously I am one. But I couldn’t help how I was born, at all.’ Rather than dwell on it, he says he tries to let criticism slide off him, like egg from a non-stick frying pan. His determination to be Teflon is, he says, down to his parents’ long-standing advice. ‘There’s always going to be people that say rubbish. But as long as you do something that makes you happy and you’re kind to people, that’s all that matters.’ He has grown to accept, he says, ‘that I’m always gonna get it, no matter what I do. And I’m fine with that. It makes me work harder, because I’m like, I’m gonna prove these people wrong.’
Beckham was famous from birth, his arrival announced to the press outside the Portland Hospital, as befits the heir to Britain’s second royal family. As his father’s recent Netflix documentary showed, his childhood was hardly stress free. The scenes of him, as a young child, scared and bewil- dered by crowds of paparazzi, a mob banging on the family car windows, are difficult to watch. His parents have both said that it was Brooklyn, their eldest, who was most impacted by the press hysteria. Watching it now, he recognises that ‘it’s crazy how I was so young. I was literally a baby. And I still remember so many little parts of that.’ The documentary has been credited with shining a light on just how frightening the press treatment of the Beckhams was. ‘There’s a lot of me growing up, when my dad was playing for [Manchester] United and my mum was in the Spice Girls, and how hectic it was. I think people realised, a little bit, when that came out, and they’re like, “Oh shit, like, he really had it, he was really young,”’ he says.
For all his determination to ignore the ‘haters’, Beckham does seem to have emerged from it as a sensitive person – something reflected in his decision to give up trying to play professional football at 15, after years of training. It was hard, he says. ‘As I got older, when my teammates were saying stuff, when I overheard, like, “Oh, David Beckham’s son messed up.” Obviously, those little things got into my head.’
That sensitivity really comes out when he talks about his wife. They got to know each other in Los Angeles, through his friendship with her brothers. Now, he says, she is his closest confidante, the person he goes to the most for advice. Both have huge, well-known families (she has six brothers, he is one of four) and can relate to each other in a way few others would be able to.
‘We grew up similarly,’ he says. ‘I feel like it’s me and her against the world, basically.’ His many tattoos include the phrase ‘our bubble’, which is what he calls ‘our gaff ’, in LA. The idea of insulating himself with his wife and their dogs seems to appeal a great deal. Angel, Beckham’s three-legged rescue puppy, comes to every shoot he does; he seems reassured by her presence. He says dogs are ‘so much better than humans. Always happy to see you. Always make you feel better.’
He hopes he will be a dad soon. ‘When- ever my wife’s ready,’ he says. ‘I’ve always wanted to be a young dad. I love that my dad’s young. He was like my mate.’ He does want to replicate his own childhood, he says, in many ways. ‘Just how my dad raised me. So loving. I really know I’m going to be a great dad. My mum and dad were the best mum and dad ever,’ he says. ‘They did an amazing job. I think I turned out all right.’ That said, ‘I don’t think it’s going to be as hectic as when I was a baby. So that might be a little bit different.’
Beckham doesn’t come across as someone who necessarily enjoys the spotlight for its own sake. He’s friendly but understandably a bit wary in our interview; he is professional in the shoot but doesn’t seem to thrive as the centre of attention. Why does he keep launching projects, risking public scrutiny in the process? ‘I’ve never been that lazy person to just sit back and just do nothing,’ he says. ‘I really want to make a name for myself. I want my kids to grow up and be like, “My daddy did that.” That’s what I think about.
‘I worked so hard on not just attaching my name to a hot sauce and just putting it out. I decided every little aspect. I’ve never worked so hard on something,’ he says. He is keen to differentiate it from previous projects which, he says, ‘didn’t turn out the way I had wished. I did enjoy photography for a minute, then I ended up not enjoying it; I wasn’t passionate about it.’ This is different, he says, rattling off the sauce’s key selling points like a chip off the old block (‘a whisky decanter, tattoo kind of vibe. Gorgeous to look at. Something that looks great on a Michelin-star table and also tastes really good in a food truck,’ he says.)
Just before we meet he finds out that Whole Foods will stock the hot sauces, a validating endorsement that clearly means a lot to him. ‘It could actually become a big thing, you know?’ he says, proudly. Watch this space.
cloud23.co.uk
Photos: Lorenzo Cisi. Styling: Maurice Diallo.
Shot on location at Patti Ann’s restaurant, Brooklyn
Groomer Laila Hayani. AD Ryan Espinosa. Photographer’s assistant Chris Chu. Stylist’s assistant Ryan Golz. On-set producer Jean Jarvis.
TOP IMAGE Brooklyn wears: (left) T-shirt, £490, trousers, £1,150, and jacket, £2,400, all DIOR MEN; (right) Jacket, £2,400, T-shirt, £490, and trousers, £1,150, all DIOR MEN.