Studio 99 co-founder David Beckham was talking at the RTS London Convention
RTS LONDON: Studio 99 co-founder David Beckham has denied his self-produced Netflix docuseries Beckham was a vanity project, delegates at the RTS London Convention heard.
The former Manchester United and England footballer says he wasn’t involved in editing the hit four-part series and it was important that he “felt uncomfortable” while being interviewed about his private life for the project.
Beckham was speaking today at a panel session hosted by Jane Featherstone, co-founder and CCO of prodco Sister.
He co-founded London-based prodco Studio 99 in 2019. The outfit primarily specialises in sports-skewing factual content such as Manchester United-focussed show 99 and Ronnie O’Sullivan: The Edge of Everything, both for Prime Video.
Studio 99’s most successful title has been 2023’s Beckham, directed by Fisher Stevens. It was Netflix’s most-watched documentary of the year but attracted criticism from many in the industry who questioned how impartial the docuseries could be when it was produced by Beckham himself.
Critics questioned why Beckham wasn’t pushed more on his alleged affair with former model Rebecca Loos in 2004. Beckham has previously dismissed the claims as “ludicrous.”
Beckham insists that he didn’t exercise editorial control during the making of Beckham, particularly in the editing stage, and had never seen the show before it was released.
He said: “I’m not going to lie, I found it very difficult because there were moments where I was talking about things I’d never spoken about before.
“From day one and throughout the making of the whole documentary, I said I didn’t want to see anything until it came out. I didn’t go into the edit and I didn’t see any cuts. Fisher was the man who could make me feel really uncomfortable, which is what the documentary needed.
“I really needed a director to come at it from a different angle to bring something different out of me. I never saw anything until the moment I saw it at the premiere.”
Studio 99’s next project for Netflix is a docuseries about his wife, former Spice Girl and fashion designer Victoria Beckham.
“I’m quite excited about giving her notes!” joked Beckham. “It was hard to convince her to do this, but she loves Netflix and was a big part of the process.”
Despite defending himself from accusations about a lack of editorial impartiality in Studio 99’s content, Beckham admits that he enjoys being one of the world’s most popular social media stars because it allows him to “control and protect the narrative” of his own life.
With a total of around 200 million followers on various social platforms, he claims that he creates all social content himself rather than rely on a team of digital creators to do it for him.
“I’m over every single thing on my social media channels to have that authentic content,” he told delegates in London.
“My relationship with the [traditional] media over the years has been well documented in the Beckham documentary, but the world has changed. You can now control, create and protect your own narrative with your own content. That’s something that I love.”
