Victoria Beckham Netflix Docuseries Reveals Eating Disorder, Debt

Victoria Beckham‘s eponymous Netflix docuseries is streaming now, delivering a revealing portrait of the Spice Girl turned football WAG turned fashion mogul. The three-part series — directed by “Becoming” filmmaker Nadia Hallgren — gives viewers a front row seat as Victoria mounts her most ambitious fashion show to date, while also looking back on all the ups and downs of her ever-evolving career.

Featuring raw and honest interviews with Victoria and David Beckham as well as fashion icons like Anna Wintour and Tom Ford, “Victoria Beckham” depicts Posh Spice as you’ve never seen her before. Often taunted by tabloids for her unsmiling demeanor, Victoria shows off her sense of humor and gets real about some of the most difficult parts of her past, including her struggles with an eating disorder and almost losing her fashion business entirely.

Here are the nine biggest revelations from “Victoria Beckham,” streaming on Netflix now.

She Was ‘Bullied’ Growing Up

Posh Spice wasn’t always popular. In fact, quite the opposite.

“That uncool kid at school that’s awkward, that was me,” Victoria reveals early on in the docuseries, adding that she was “definitely a loner” and was “bullied.” The only place she found solace was in the performing arts.

“I just didn’t fit in at all. But when you’re on stage for that moment, you’re someone else,” she says. “And I didn’t really want to be me. I didn’t like me.”

Even when her parents were able to afford to send her to theater school, her social struggles continued. “I started getting a lot of criticism about my appearance, my weight,” Victoria says. But when she landed an audition for the Spice Girls — for which she sang “Mein Herr” from the musical “Cabaret” — her entire life seemed to change overnight.

Transitioning From Spice Girl to Full-Time Mom Was ‘Really Difficult’

After six years at the top of the charts, the Spice Girls decided to break up in 2000. Victoria, who had been dating fast-rising footballer David Beckham since 1997, gave birth to their first son, Brooklyn, in March 1999. She and David married four months later and moved to Manchester to be closer to his club. But Victoria struggled with the transition.

“When the Spice Girls finished, it was so extreme,” she says in the doc. “One minute I’m spreading word of girl power, and then the next minute I’m a wife in a flat in Manchester, not really having any friends, living a long way away from my family. And I found that transition really, really difficult.”

She continues: “It felt quite slow, it felt really lonely. And I remember thinking, God, is anyone going to want to put me on a plane and do a photoshoot again? I just kept thinking, what am I gonna do?”

Victoria reveals that she “became so self-conscious” during this period of her life as she started to endure increased backlash in the press. “People thought I was that miserable cow that never smiled,” she says of that time in her life. “And they’re not wrong.”

She Was ‘Attention-Seeking’ During Her WAG Era

As the tabloids continued to bash her, Victoria decided to lean into her WAG status. In 2003, she moved to Spain with David for his contract with Real Madrid and started dressing the part — big sunglasses, bigger boobs and minimal clothing.

“I look at those pictures and I smile. But when I look back and think why, I suppose there is an element of attention-seeking if I’m being completely honest,” Victoria admits in the doc. “It was at a time when I didn’t feel creatively fulfilled, so it’s how I stayed in the conversation from Spice Girls to WAGs. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was trying to find myself. I felt incomplete, sad, frozen in time maybe. I was appreciative of what I had, but I need a sense of purpose. And I remember saying to myself, if I ever get an opportunity again, I’m not going to lose it.”

That’s when Victoria turned to fashion. When David signed with the L.A. Galaxy in 2007 and the family moved to Los Angeles, she gained a bit of her confidence back and asked for a meeting with designer Roland Mouret.

In order for Victoria to be taken seriously by the fashion world, Mouret says: “We had to kill the WAG.”

The One Thing Mel B Said That ‘Upset’ Her

But before Victoria could fully launch her fashion empire, the Spice Girls decided to reunite for a tour in 2008. Though “it was good to be back with them,” Victoria mentions something that Mel B said that “upset” her.

“One of the girls actually said to me, and it did upset me not too long ago actually — it was Melanie B who said to me, ‘Don’t forget where you’ve come from,’” Victoria says. “I have never forgotten where I’ve come from. I have never, ever forgotten that Posh Spice is the reason that I’m sitting here now. She might have been grumpy, but she was actually great.”

Of the tour itself, Victoria says: “It was good to celebrate the Spice Girls, but it was during that tour that I realized I didn’t belong on stage. It had been fun, but it wasn’t what I loved anymore.”

So, she decided to level up and, yes, kill the WAG. “I knew that to start this new chapter of my life, I had to change. Strip the other personas away,” she says. “You know, I buried those boobs in Baden-Baden. I became a simpler, more elegant version of myself and I went to work.”

The Chances of Her Brand Being Successful Were ‘Very Slim’

When Victoria started her self-named fashion brand, the cards were stacked against her. As a celebrity entering the space with no prior experience in the industry, earning respect would be an uphill battle.

“I wanted to call her and say, why? Why would you do this?” Tom Ford recalls in the doc. “Do you understand this business is so tough? I think a lot of people didn’t take it seriously.”

Victoria admits that “the likelihood that I was going to become successful was very, very slim.” However, she “really didn’t listen to that,” adding: “That fueled me, to be completely honest.”

In 2008, she debuted her first collection, showing 10 dresses in a hotel suite. David wasn’t even in attendance — though he helped set up the brand financially — because she “didn’t want celebrities there.”

Though success was slow coming, Victoria knew she made it when she saw Madonna wearing one of her dresses in W Magazine and Vogue editor Anna Wintour finally attended one of her shows in 2011.

“I was skeptical,” Wintour says in the doc. “I think we can all be a bit snobby in the fashion business and think maybe this is a side gig, but Victoria was one that totally proved us wrong.”

She Opens Up About Struggling With an Eating Disorder

Victoria gets extremely candid about her lifelong struggle with disordered eating, which worsened after she gave birth to Brooklyn in 1999 and adjusted to motherhood.

“I was weighed on national television when Brooklyn was six months old,” Victoria reveals. “‘Get on those scales’ on television. ‘Have you lost the weight?’ And we laugh about it and we joke about it when we’re on television, but I was really, really young and that hurts.”

She “started to doubt myself and not like myself” after hearing about comments made surrounding her weight in the tabloids and on TV. “I didn’t know what I saw when I looked in the mirror. Was I fat? Was I thin? I don’t know, you lose all sense of reality,” she says. “I was just very critical of myself. I didn’t like what I saw. I’ve been everything from porky Posh to skinny Posh. I mean, you know, it’s been a lot and that’s hard.”

Victoria continues: “I had no control over what was being written about me, pictures that were being taken and I suppose I wanted to control that. I could control it with the clothing, I could control my weight. And I was controlling it in an incredibly unhealthy way. When you have an eating disorder, you become very good at lying. And I was never honest about it with my parents. I never talked about it publicly. It really affects you when you’re being told constantly you’re not good enough. And I suppose that’s been with me my whole life.”

These self-image issues still stick with her today. “The minute I see a camera, I change. The barrier goes up, my armor goes on, and that’s when the miserable cow that doesn’t smile, that’s when she comes out. And I’m so conscious of that,” she says. “And I don’t like that, I’d rather not be that person. I’d love to have the confidence to walk out of a restaurant and smile or stand on a red carpet and smile. But I just can’t do it.”

At One Point, Her Brand Was ‘Tens of Millions in the Red’

The Victoria Beckham fashion brand was growing and getting great reviews, but in reality, it was bleeding money. By 2016, something needed to change.

“There was a lot of money being spent that never should have been spent. The losses were so big. David was investing a lot,” Victoria says.

David admits that the financial struggles “did make me panic,” saying: “I never saw anything coming back. We always agreed that we would support each other, no matter what. But it worried me. This isn’t sustainable.”

Victoria says she felt “embarrassed,” especially when the brand’s downfall became public knowledge, and became “really, really desperate” to save what she had worked so hard for.

“I almost lost everything. And that was a dark, dark time,” she says. “I used to cry before I went to work every day because I just, I felt like a firefighter. We were tens of millions in the red.”

David recalls a tough discussion where he had to tell Victoria that he could no longer invest in a faltering business. “Part of that conversation broke my heart because Victoria is a proud woman,” he says. “So for her to have to come to me and say, ‘We need some more money, the business needs more money,’ that was hard for both of us. Because I didn’t have the money to keep doing this. And eventually I was like, this cannot continue.”

Victoria ultimately brought in David Belhassen of NEO Investment Partners as her business partner. During his interview for the docuseries, Belhassen doesn’t sugarcoat things: “It was a disaster. We started to look at the press, horrible. They were like, this is the worst business ever. Then you look at the book and you look at the numbers: losses, losses, losses. Never made a profit. Frankly, I’d never seen something as hard as that to fix.”

But how did she get there? Belhassen chalks it up to “people telling her what she wanted to hear.”

“I remember one of the expenses was the office plants, because she loves plants. And it was costing like $70,000 a year,” he adds. “And then there was someone who was coming to water the plants for $15,000 a year. And that’s only the beginning.”

Victoria agrees. “I hear it now and I’m horrified, but I allowed that to happen. And I think part of the problem was people were really afraid to tell me no,” she says. “I think probably there’s a power, if I’m being honest — the power of celebrity. People thought that I wasn’t used to hearing no. I’ll hold my hands up and be accountable for things that I have done that I should have done and could have done differently. And I was in debt. There was a lot I had to change. I realized I’d lost my way.”

‘Fuck This. We’re Doing This Show, No Matter What’

The entire docuseries leads up to Victoria’s biggest fashion show yet during Paris Fashion Week. She’s rented a palace outside of the City of Lights for the occasion, but what she can’t control is the rain. Just a few hours before the show, a torrential downpour threatens to halt the event, but Victoria perseveres.

“I’ve worked hard to earn my place in this industry, and I don’t want to lose everything that I’ve built,” she says. “Fuck this. We’re doing this show, no matter what.”

As luck would have it, the rain stops just before the show — but that doesn’t guarantee a success. “When we all got there and it was wet and it was cold, and we could all see there was a long way to go… Victoria faced an audience that was maybe not 100% on her side,” Wintour says.

However, the show is pulled off without a hitch and Gigi Hadid stuns as its closer in an emerald green gown. “I felt that night she was achieving her dreams,” Wintour says. “I really did feel that put her exactly where she wants to be.”

And She’s ‘Not Stopping Yet’

Despite her great success at Paris Fashion Week, Victoria makes it clear in the closing scene of the docuseries that she has no plans to rest on her laurels. In a candid conversation at their home in the Cotswolds, David asks her why she’s constantly trying to prove herself: “What is stopping you from just saying OK, I’ve achieved it?”

Victoria replies, “Because I’ve spent so many years fighting and building that I feel now I really have an opportunity, and I don’t want to let that slip.”

David questions who she’s trying to prove this to. “Maybe, a lot of it, to you,” Victoria says. “You know, of course I feel bad about all that time when I had to ask you to help me out.”

“You don’t have to prove it to me ever,” David reassures her, but Victoria tells him that she wants to as she starts to tear up.

“When I saw your face and the kids’ faces backstage after the last show, it was not the first time, but it was a real moment for me where I could see how proud of me you were. You know?” she says.

“You could make a cheese toasted sandwich and we’d be proud of you, just to be clear,” David replies, to which Victoria says: “Let’s be honest, I couldn’t actually make a cheese sandwich very well.”

Victoria concludes: “Success — it feels good, I’m not gonna lie. I’m proud and I’m not ashamed to say that I’m ambitious and I’ve still got a lot that I want to do. I’m not stopping yet.”