Victoria Beckham: From Spice Girl to fashion mogul

Now here's something you might not quite believe about Victoria Beckham, glam Spice Girl turned high-profile fashion designer: At theater school, they purposely put her in the back row. Because she was too heavy.

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"It was really difficult," she says now of the memory from her youth, sipping a sparkling water in a Manhattan hotel in between work engagements. "We were all judged on how we looked. I was young. I had bad skin, my weight was going up and down, I had really lank hair."

Beckham was also bullied in school and told she was a bad learner, revelations that come in a new documentary, "Victoria Beckham." The three-part Netflix series traces her career and especially her ascension in the fashion world - building up to a grand Paris runway show at a palace in front of 600 people.

That 2024 show with a rainstorm threatening to scuttle the whole thing is presented as a career pinnacle for a designer who spent years proving herself alongside giants of the field, showing she wasn't simply a celebrity slapping her name on a label. (Vogue's Anna Wintour is among the fashion luminaries attesting to Beckham's hard-won industry acceptance in the documentary).

Of course the show also features liberal doses of Beckham's soccer legend husband David just as Victoria appeared in his own recent, popular Netflix documentary "Beckham" (both were produced by David Beckham's own Studio 99).

Some reviews have said Victoria's documentary feels more guarded and less revelatory. In any case, Victoria Beckham says she wanted to tell her own story, her own way. She focuses only briefly on what a certain generation knows her best for the four years she spent as Posh Spice and mostly on the two decades she's been building her eponymous fashion and beauty brand.

Beckham, 51, sat down with The Associated Press this week during a visit to New York. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

AP: The other Beckham documentary appeared only two years ago. Why did you feel the need for your own?