Victoria Beckham and husband David Beckham peel back the curtain on the alleged affair he had that put a strain on their marriage in “Beckham,” the new Netflix limited series about the soccer star’s life.
After David Beckham was transferred to Spain to play for Real Madrid in 2003, rumors started flying in 2004 that he had cheated on his wife with his personal assistant, Rebecca Loos. The British tabloids had a field day covering the matter and the couple, who married in 1999, experienced a test of the strength of their union.
“There was some horrible stories that were difficult to deal with,” David Beckham says in the fourth and final episode of the series. “It was the first time that me and Victoria had been put under that kind of pressure in our marriage.”
The couple neither confirms nor denies the rumors in the documentary. He previously denied them.
Victoria Beckham said it was the toughest time they had experience in their marriage. At the time, she was in England.
“A hundred percent,” she said. “It was the hardest period for us because it felt like the world was against us. And here’s the thing: We were against each other, if I’m being completely honest."
“Up until Madrid, sometimes it felt like us against everybody else, but we were together, we were connected, we had each other. But when we were in Spain, it didn’t really feel like we had each other either. And that’s sad.”
“I can’t even begin to tell you how hard it was. And how it affected me,” she added.
At that point in time, the couple had two children, sons Brooklyn and Romeo. Their third son, Cruz, was born in Madrid in 2005, while daughter Harper was born in Los Angeles in 2011.
David Beckham said transitioning to life in Spain presented a challenge for him because he was in a place where he couldn’t speak the language and didn’t have his family with him.
‘Every time that we woke up we felt there was something else,” he said. “I think we both felt at the time that we were not losing each other, but drowning.”
How did they survive that rocky period?
‘I don’t know how we got through it, in all honesty,” he said.
“Victoria is everything to me. To see her hurt was incredibly difficult, but we’re fighters and at that time we needed to fight for each other. We needed to fight for our family. And what we had was worth fighting for.”
He also said his personal life had bled into his professional one, with him often wondering how he could possibly play soccer.
“There were some days that I would wake up and think, ‘How am I going to go to work? How am I going to walk on to that training pitch? How am I going to look as if nothing’s wrong?’” he recalled.
“I felt physically sick every day when I opened my eyes. ‘How am I going to do this?’”
David Beckham tried to get a handle on his personal life and maintain his status as a soccer icon, as Real Madrid also struggled on the pitch. Victoria Beckham and their kids would eventually move to Madrid, but things did not necessarily improve.
“It was a nightmare,” she said. “From the minute we opened the door in the morning, the press were there in cars and everywhere we went, we were followed.”
She said their life had become “a circus” and she was not happy with her husband.
“Did I resent David? If I am being totally honest, yes I did,” she said.
“It was probably, if I’m being honest, the most unhappy I have ever been in my entire life. It wasn’t that I felt unheard because I chose to internalize a lot of it because I was always mindful of a focus that he needed.”
Victoria also opened up about how happy she was when her husband wound up playing for Major League Soccer’s Los Angeles Galaxy in 2007.
“I was so relieved to be going from such a tricky situation in Spain,” she said. "It was a place where everything was just so much easier. Easier to find a house, easier to find a school. You don’t have a language barrier. And so for me, it was all my dreams come true.”
“I let go of a lot of pain,” she said, adding that their family life improved.
“I definitely felt at peace. Finally, we seemed settled,” she added.
Victoria and David are now closing in on 25 years of marriage and have reached a point where they have found their version of bliss.
“Why I feel happy now is I feel really content now,” she said.