David and Victoria Beckham's Netflix documentary has received five Emmy nominations, winning the battle of the celebrity biopics with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex's six-part Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan did not get any Emmy nominations.
By contrast, Beckham has been nominated for Best Documentary or Nonfiction Series, Outstanding Cinematography for a Nonfiction Program, Outstanding Directing for a Documentary/Nonfiction Program, Outstanding Picture Editing, and Outstanding Music Composition.
David Beckham told Hello!: "Making this series was such a personal journey, a love letter to football and my family. It has been overwhelming for me and Victoria that we have had such a warm and positive response to the series."
The show was famous for one particular scene in which Victoria described having a working-class upbringing only for David to put his head around the door and tell her to "be honest" about the fact she was driven to school in a luxury Rolls-Royce.
That viral moment was typical of a more general warts-and-all approach to the project. Beckham was directed by actor and filmmaker Fisher Stevens, who plays Waystar Royco comms chief Hugo Baker in Succession.
By contrast, the Sussexes' docuseries flew to the top of the Netflix chart in Britain and America and was top 10 in 85 countries but never got equivalent recognition among either press or reviewers. Harry & Meghan received no Emmy nominations in the 2023 awards when the outstanding documentary award went to revisionist history film The 1619 Project.
The fact that the Beckhams have cleaned up—at least as far as nominations—shows it is possible for a celebrity biopic to win recognition, including one that has a strong U.K. focus.
It is not completely clear why the commercial success of Harry & Meghan did not translate into awards recognition. The same trend did emerge in relation to their bombshell TV interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021. It was nominated for Outstanding Hosted Nonfiction Series or Special but lost. In the interview, Meghan accused an unnamed royal of racially discriminating against her unborn children; Harry would later describe the allegation as one of unconscious bias rather than racism.
Meghan also told Winfrey that she experienced suicidal thoughts while pregnant and a barrage of media hostility.
Given the huge global audience and the profoundly serious nature of the allegations, it was somewhat surprising to see Oprah With Meghan and Harry beaten to the Emmy Award by cookery show Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, a somewhat lighter and more frivolous project. It was at least nominated, though.
Meanwhile, Harry & Meghan has a 43 percent score on critical aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes among critics, while more than 5,000 audience reviews collectively gave it an average of 19 percent.
Interestingly, Meghan has won a People's Choice and a Gracie Award for her Spotify podcast Archetypes, though she did not attend either ceremony.
It is not clear what made the difference, though the 12-episode podcast show was far less critical of the British monarchy, containing only a handful of veiled swipes that were confined to the opening episodes.
Following the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022, there were no further royal bombshells.
Harry and Meghan have in general been largely absent from the Hollywood circuit, having attended no Los Angeles premieres and no major TV awards galas in California.
Meghan was at Variety's Power of Women awards in November 2023 but has not attended, for example, the Emmys or the Oscars, since relocating back to her home state in 2020.
Jack Royston is Newsweek's chief royal correspondent based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
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