Fisher Stevens has spent the best part of two years in the company of one of the most famous people in the world –David Beckham. He was granted exclusive access, given new insights and was privy to some sweet marital flirting between Posh and Becks, all while holding on to the final cut. It's safe to say Beckham is the documentary series we've all been waiting for.
And as a man who's been in the public eye for nearly three decades, David wouldn't let any old team tell the story of his life. He entrusted actor and director Fisher Stevens alongside producers John Battsek, Nicola Howson and Billie Shepherd, and executive producers David Gardner and Gary Neville. And it features interviews with Gary Neville, Sir Alex Ferguson, David's parents, Victoria Beckham, Sporty Spice and more.
The result is a four-part documentary series and it's available to stream on Netflix now. So who is the chosen director, Fisher Stevens? And where have you seen him before? Here's everything you need to know.
Who is Fisher Stevens?
Fisher Stevens, 59, is an American actor, director, producer and writer. As an actor, he is best known for his portrayals of Ben in Short Circuit and Short Circuit 2 and, most recently Hugo in Succession. He is also a documentary filmmaker and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for The Cove.
He has also been married to his film making partner and fellow producer Alexis Bloom since 2017 and he has two children.
What has Fisher Stevens directed?
Fisher won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature for The Cove (2010) and he's also directed the documentaries Crazy Love (2007), and Before the Flood (2016).
Are Fisher Stevens and David Beckham friends?
Apparently, it was mutual friend Leonardo Dicaprio (of course), who put David and Fisher Stevens in touch. David signed a deal with Netflix back in 2020 and agreed to include a documentary about his life, and Fisher was brought on board later. The director has since said, 'I love football, but I got into it the year Beckham left for Madrid, so I didn't really know about how great he was. I didn't know much other than that he was really pretty, had a beautiful wife, and sold a lot of products.'
And over the course of the past two years, David and Fisher have built a friendship of their own. However, not to the detriment of the documentary. Fisher only agreed to sign on to the project if nothing was off the table. 'There's a lot of things he asked me to change that I didn't,' the director told Esquire.
'I constantly had to make sure I wasn't making a branded Beckham film. I made parameters. I told David he couldn’t have the final cut. The fact is: I've made documentaries about people that didn't necessarily want me to make documentaries about them, and that is a much worse position to be in, because you're fighting to get the information,' he added.
What has Fisher Stevens said about David Beckham?
The director told The Guardian, 'I’ve never been through what David and Victoria went through. I tried to put myself in David’s head. I felt at times I was going through what he went through. I wanted the audience to feel what he felt. I hope that comes through.'
'People think he’s this beautiful guy, that everything was handed to him. Not true. He worked his way up and he could have been crushed by what happened to him in 1998 – but he wasn’t. He’s one of the strongest people I know.'
Is Fisher Stevens in Succession?
Believe it or not, Fisher has a familiar face for a reason. He is known for his acting roles in films such as Reversal of Fortune (1990), Bob Roberts (1992), Hackers (1995), Anything Else (2003), and Hail, Caesar! (2016). He has acted in the Wes Anderson films The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Isle of Dogs (2018), The French Dispatch (2021), and Asteroid City (2023).
He's also played Chuck Fishman in CBS series Early Edition (1996-2000), Marvin Gerard on NBC's The Blacklist (2015-2022), Gabriel Kovac in CBS's The Good Fight (2017-2020), and Hugo Baker in the HBO drama series Succession (2019-2023). And most importantly, he played one of Phoebe Buffay's boyfriends in Friends.
You thought you'd recognised him!
When is Beckham out on Netflix?
The four-part Netflix series Beckham is out on Wednesday 4 October and each episode is an hour long.