“I wanted him to be vulnerable and open to the world, to be looked into his eyes,” explains the actor/producer/director Fisher Stevens about the rapprochement David Beckhams life story through revealing close-ups of Beckham’s eyes at key moments in the series. The Oscar winner (for Best Documentary Feature for The Cove) uses this more intimate style of filmmaking to great effect, giving audiences a glimpse into Beckham’s emotional state as he watches and reacts to videos of the ups and downs of his career and personal life. “I thought this is a great way to get right in there, and he won’t even really know it because I’m hitting him right between the eyes,” he explains during our recent web chat, adding that he “wanted to look directly into his eyes to ask him things and then show him things that trigger other emotions. To be in the moment and get to the essence of the human being.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.
“Beckham” follows the British international soccer player’s meteoric rise from humble beginnings to global stardom. Featuring previously unreleased videos and interviews with Beckham, his family and friends, the series takes the audience on a journey from his childhood as an aspiring soccer player to his marriage to his Spice Girls girlfriend. Victoria Beckham. The series then traces his career as a player for the glamorous British Premier League club Manchester United, as captain of the English football team and his much-publicized transfer to Real Madrid. “Beckham” then turns to the latest chapters of his fairytale life as a star player for the US Major League Soccer team LA Galaxy and then as co-owner of the newly formed MLS club Inter Miami. The four-part Netflix docuseries is nominated for five Emmys this year, including Best Documentary or Nonfiction Series, as well as for its cinematography, editing, music and as an actor/filmmaker in the documentary directing category, his seventh Emmy nomination to date.
“When I was approached, I didn’t know much about David Beckham. I was a Liverpool fan. I only started following the Premier League in 2003, the year he actually moved to Real Madrid. I only knew him from LA Galaxy and didn’t even know how great he was,” Stevens recalls of his initial reservations about taking on the project. After being approached by Leonardo DiCaprio and his production company to direct the series, Stevens says it soon became clear that he was destined to take the reins of the series. “I was on my way to work on ‘Succession’, and ‘Succession’ is being produced by a British gentleman named Jesse Armstrongand the director is Mark Mylodwho is British and the other producer, Tony Roche – they’re all British,” he explains, when asking the creative team behind “Succession,” in which he played slick Waystar Royco PR executive Hugo Baker, for advice. “They were like, ‘Is David Beckham any good? Are you crazy? He was one of the greats! He was fantastic.’ And I tell them I got this call and they say, ‘You have to do this.’ And I’m like, ‘Seriously, isn’t he just ‘Brand Beckham’?’ And they’re like, ‘No, mate. No, no, no, no!’ And then they just downloaded David Beckham’s top 10 goals on their iPhone, showed me a YouTube clip and I was like, ‘Holy shit. This guy was incredible,'” he recalls.
Stevens soon discovered that not only did Beckham have a compelling story, but that he would be an intriguing subject if the director could evoke some of Beckham’s raw and unprocessed emotions, which might be triggered by confronting some of his greatest achievements as well as some of his darkest days. The hardest part was getting raw and real reactions from a man who, after years of dealing with a fussy and often overly critical British press, is unsurprisingly reserved. “He’s a good guy. He’s shockingly nice, shockingly polite and had a very good upbringing. I think you can see that in the show; that’s who he is. He’s also a guy who’s not used to showing his emotions. He never went to therapy and that was challenging because I had to constantly push him to get certain answers or at least try to figure out certain emotions and feelings about a certain time in his life, whatever time that might have been, and I had to keep bombarding him with questions because he wasn’t used to it.”
PREDICTIONS the Emmy winners 2024
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