‘They are hugely embarrassed. Nicola wants this drama’: Ignoring texts, crisis talks and truth about dancefloor ‘nuzzling’… how Victoria Beckham has REALLY reacted to Brooklyn’s astonishing claims – by the woman she’s turned to for comfort

As family schedules go, this was not a good week for David and Victoria Beckham to be 750 miles apart.

While Victoria has been hiding out at the family’s £12million barn conversion in the Cotswolds, with her youngest children, Cruz, 20, and Harper, 14, David has been in Davos, Switzerland, attending the World Economic Forum.

Both were, understandably, blindsided by the jaw-dropping tirade posted by their eldest son, Brooklyn, 26, on social media earlier this week.

In it, he accused his parents of ‘trying endlessly to ruin [his] relationship’ with his heiress wife, Nicola Peltz-Beckham, 31, of ‘consistently’ disrespecting her, of subjecting the pair to ‘endless attacks’ in the press and of living a ‘facade’ that led to him growing up with ‘overwhelming anxiety’.

In a cruel jibe at Victoria, he accused her of having ‘hijacked’ his first dance with his wife at their wedding, and dancing ‘very inappropriately on me in front of everyone. I’ve never felt more uncomfortable or humiliated in my entire life,’ he wrote.

Arguably, there can be few feeling more humiliated this week than his own mother.

Neither of his parents have spoken since the bombshell six-page Instagram statement.

Out of the spotlight, Victoria, 51, is doing her best to act normally – for the sake of her other children.

She has spent the week having crisis calls with her publicists, ignoring texts from friends and only logging onto social media to promote a gig that Cruz and his band The Breakers are playing next month.

Tonight, she plans to attend Emma Bunton’s 50th birthday bash, being held just down the road from her home, at Soho Farmhouse. One imagines she will be giving the dancefloor a wide berth.

But in this dire hour of need, the Daily Mail can reveal there is one person – a close friend, on the other side of the Atlantic – from whom Victoria has been seeking counsel.

It is understood that she and the female friend, whom she has known since she and David lived in America 15 years ago, have been in almost constant contact via text message since Brooklyn’s written attack on his family on Monday.

Giving exclusive insight into Victoria’s heartache for the first time, the confidante says both her friend and David are ‘mortified’ by this public airing of their family rift.

‘They are hugely embarrassed but know that they have to move on with their lives,’ she has told others in her close-knit circle.

‘One day, she is sure, Brooklyn will come home and they will welcome him with open arms.

‘For now, in the bosom of the Peltz family, he doesn’t need their money or their support. Nicola wants to be the star and all this drama is keeping her in the spotlight.’

This source, who was a guest of the Beckhams at the wedding in April 2022, insists reports of Victoria ‘nuzzling’ into her eldest son’s neck are wholly inaccurate.

Firstly, the incident was not a ‘first dance’, nor did Victoria ‘hijack’ a moment intended for Brooklyn and Nicola.

The newlyweds had already danced together, at 8.30pm that evening, to a rendition of Elvis Presley’s Can’t Help Falling In Love, performed by South African singer Lloyiso. There was even a second song for the happy couple: Ben E. King’s Stand By Me.

Marc Anthony, 57, the American singer and a long-term friend of the Beckhams, didn’t take to the stage until much later – around 11pm.

He then gave an impromptu, rambling speech about the Beckhams’ loving marriage – which riled the bride’s parents, Nelson and Claudia Peltz, who have been married since 1985 – before saluting Victoria as ‘the most beautiful woman in the room’.

This, some sources have said, caused Nicola to burst into tears and run from the marquee.

Accounts vary as to which of Marc’s Latino hits Brooklyn and his mother danced to – I Need To Know or You Sang To Me – but the fateful mother-son moment came next. Guests have told this newspaper it was nothing more than a ‘slow dance’. Both mother-son and father-daughter dances are commonplace at US weddings, far more so than they are in the UK.

It is also important to dissect the terminology used by Brooklyn – that his mother danced ‘on’ him – an American term which means no more than the British equivalent of ‘danced with’, but appears to convey more innuendo.

That it featured in Brooklyn’s statement suggests one of two things: that Americanisms have infiltrated his once-British dialect; or, perhaps more likely, that his wife had a hand in writing it.

The source close to Victoria insists: ‘Everyone thought it was a sweet moment. Nothing was pre-planned; it was all Marc Anthony.

‘As the bride and her father had already danced together [earlier in the evening], he thought it would be a nice gesture to invite Brooklyn and his mother to do the same.

‘None of the guests realised Nicola was upset – they didn’t see that side of things. Victoria is a Spice Girl; she’s not without an ego. So, of course, she was dancing and loving the attention. But no one thought it was inappropriate – she was just being herself.’

The Beckhams’ long-time friend, DJ Fat Tony, who performed at the wedding, appeared on ITV’s This Morning yesterday to offer his account, saying Brooklyn looked ‘devastated’ and Nicola left the room ‘crying her eyes out’.

He recalled: ‘Brooklyn is stuck there on stage, and they do this dance, and Marc Anthony says, “Put your hands on your mother’s hips,” and it was a Latin thing, and the whole situation was really awkward for everyone in the room.’ Tony later told the Daily Mail that he saw Nicola’s whole family storm out of the wedding.

‘Brooklyn left right after the dance – Nicola left the room and afterwards he went after her.

‘Nicola’s family left – they went after their daughter.

‘Marc Anthony is a Latin singer. It was a love song . . . it was slow dancing; it wasn’t like some samba number. Victoria had her arms around his neck.’

Other guests insist it wasn’t just Brooklyn and Victoria on the dancefloor. Pictures in Vogue magazine – with which the newlyweds did an official (and highly lucrative) exclusivity deal – show David and Harper embracing during a dance. She is barefoot in the photo, and he is no longer wearing his jacket, suggesting it was taken later in the evening, and no other guests are visible on the dancefloor.

But this was far from the only point at which tensions between the Peltz and Beckham families apparently erupted during the big day. It was, our source says, ‘a nightmare from beginning to end’.

‘Before the wedding, Nicola was very specific about what she wanted and Brooklyn was very lackadaisical. He just wanted her to be happy, so whatever she wanted, he agreed to – without putting his or his family’s views across.

‘The Beckhams didn’t get a say. They were shoehorned into doing what the Peltzes had planned. They’re not used to that, they’re used to being centre-stage.’

Victoria’s suggestion that they could host a second celebration at their Cotswolds mansion was simply ignored.

And an incident in which the Beckhams sent a security team ahead of them to do a sweep of the Peltz’s £250million oceanfront estate was said to have caused great offence to their son’s future in-laws – suggesting, somehow, a superior level of importance.

Friction was also said to be evident between the newlyweds. ‘There was no lovey-dovey cuteness coming from the bride and groom,’ another wedding guest recalls.

‘In between the pictures, she would bitch and yell at Brooklyn; they were fighting about what news pictures the paparazzi were posting. Then they’d pose for a picture and then go right back to bitching at each other.’

Another attendee compares the whole affair to ‘being on a reality TV show or a shoot’.

To readers in the UK, the influence wielded by the Peltz family – businessman and investor Nelson, Claudia, Nicola and her seven siblings – is difficult to grasp. They are, after all, not household names in the same way the Beckhams are in the UK. But their power stems entirely from wealth.

Their vast fortune, a staggering £1.2 billion, dwarfs the Beckhams’ measly £500million – creating a crude gulf between them.

‘These are two worlds that don’t always mix well,’ explains Dan Wakeford, former editor-in-chief of Us Weekly magazine, and a leading pop culture commentator.

‘In America, individuals with substantial wealth often prioritise discretion, as there is little advantage to a flamboyant public persona and it’s considered bad taste to flaunt your wealth. The Peltz family’s lifestyle contrasts sharply with the more public-facing lives often seen in Hollywood and how the Beckhams move through life. Celebrity is seen as gauche and tasteless to many folks of extreme wealth.’

This is a sentiment echoed in Brooklyn’s statement, in which he claimed Beckham family love is measured ‘by how much you post on social media’, adding: My wife and I do not want a life shaped by image, press or manipulation.’

Speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail this week, another wedding attendee says the Peltzes’ emphasis on privacy has turned Brooklyn against his parents.

He now blames them for bringing him up in the spotlight, seemingly overlooking the opportunities – his failed attempt at photography, his burgeoning cooking career, the hot sauce brand named after his dad’s football shirt number – that Brand Beckham has brought him.

‘Brooklyn marrying into the Peltzes has made him realise what being in a family is really like,’ the wedding guest explains. ‘They do not live for the cameras or believe that family is for press releases. The Peltz family has made him realise that his own is a sham.’

This, say those who have encountered Nicola over the years, is ironic given her family’s reputation for allegedly mistreating those around them, particularly their staff.

A 2009 article, in the now defunct US publication Gawker, described them as ‘the worst family in America to work for’, and claimed that a then teenage Nicola ‘routinely threatens maids that she will have her father fire them if they don’t do as she asks’.

The Peltzes vehemently denied these allegations, and after the family’s lawyers got involved, housekeeping recruiter Adrian Barrie Smith came forward insisting he’d made the claims after the family didn’t pay his contract.

More recent insights emerged as part of the lawsuit her father launched in 2023 against fired wedding planners Nicole Braghin and Arianna Grijalba. Court documents revealed Nicola insisting flowers were ‘more white’ and comparing the guest list to ‘a murder scene’, while the planners dubbed her father, now 83, a ‘billionaire bully’.

But while the Peltz parents might shun social media, their daughter – who has 3.4million followers on Instagram and 4.2million likes on TikTok – seems to relish the limelight.

In a social media carousel of perfectly-posed photographs from the wedding, it’s clear who she wanted to be the focus. Apart from the groom, Nicola avoided featuring any of the Beckham family.

For three long years, these official portraits were the only insight into what really went on at the Peltz estate that day. Until now.

A phone ban and ‘likely non-disclosure agreements’ were in place for the wedding, says Dan Wakeford. ‘It’s about maintaining control over the narrative.’

Veteran journalist Jose Lambiet, who covered the wedding and, says: ‘They were paying Palm Beach police to stand in front of reporters and block shots of the marquee.

‘They were acting like they didn’t want the media to be there, but they chose to host the reception in a translucent tent overlooking the beach, where there were 25-30 reporters and crowds of people. You could see everything that was going on – and they knew that.’

The decision to release Brooklyn’s statement will have been made in consultation with the Peltz clan and, most likely, their lawyers.

Since last July, David and Victoria have been told to contact their son via his legal team only; private texts or emails are not permitted.

‘These days, they have no choice but to use an intermediary,’ Victoria’s close friend explains. ‘Sadly, most messages aren’t returned.’

Though she may have lost the affections of her son, Victoria has gained the backing of the British public, who have launched a campaign to get her 2001 solo single Not Such An Innocent Girl to number one in the charts this weekend.

It may just raise a smile in this most difficult of weeks. For now, though, according to her confidante, her biggest concern is what lies ahead for her fractured family.

‘What happens when Nicola gets pregnant?’ the source asks. ‘What happens if their marriage breaks up once Nicola has had a Beckham baby? Will he come crawling back? Or will that child grow up without [Beckham] grandparents, aunts and uncles in the picture? This could be just the beginning of years more heartache for Victoria.’