The Oscar winner (for Best Documentary Feature for “The Cove”) deploys this more intimate style of filmmaking to great effect, 

by giving the audience a glimpse into Beckham’s emotional state as he watches and reacts to video of the highs and lows 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 going to hit him right between the eyes,” 

he explains during our recent webchat, adding that he wanted “to get right into his eyes to ask him about things and then show him things to trigger other emotions. 

To be in the moment and to get to the essence of the human.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.

“Beckham” follows the British international football star’s meteoric rise from humble beginnings to global football stardom. Featuring never-before-seen video and interviews with Beckham and his family and friends, the series takes audiences on a journey from his childhood as an aspiring football player, to his marriage to The Spice Girls’ Victoria Beckham. The series then chronicles his career playing for glamour U.K. Premier League club Manchester United, as captain of the England football team and his high-profile transfer to Real Madrid. “Beckham” then pivots to the latest chapters of his fairytale life as the marquee player of U.S. Major League Soccer team L.A. Galaxy and then as part owner of newly-established M.L.S. club Inter Miami. The four-part Netflix docuseries is nominated for five Emmys this year, including Best Documentary or Nonfiction Series and for its cinematography, editing, music and for the actor/filmmaker in the documentary directing category, his seventh career Emmy nomination to date.

“When I was approached, I didn’t know much about David Beckham. I was a Liverpool supporter. I didn’t start following the Premier League until 2003, the year he actually went to Real Madrid. I only knew him from L.A. Galaxy and I didn’t even know how great he was,” Stevens recalls about his initial misgivings 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 run by a British gentleman named Jesse Armstrong, and the director is Mark Mylod, who’s British and the other producer, Tony Roche — they’re all Brits,” he explains about asking for advice from the creative team behind “Succession,” on which he played smarmy Waystar Royco senior PR executive Hugo Baker. “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’re like ‘you have to do it.’ And I’m like, ‘really, isn’t he just ‘Brand Beckham?’ And they’re like, ‘no mate. No, no, no, no!’ And then they just put up 10 best goals by David Beckham on their iPhone showed me a YouTube clip, and I was like ‘holy shit. This guy was amazing,’” he recalls.

Stevens soon discovered that not only did Beckham have a compelling story, but he’d also be a captivating subject if the director was able to tap into some of Beckham’s raw and unprocessed emotions that he hoped might be triggered by revisiting some of his greatest accomplishments but also some of his darkest days. The hardest part was eliciting unvarnished and real responses from the man that is unsurprisingly so guarded after years of dealing with a finnicky and oftentimes overly critical British press. “He’s a good dude. He’s shockingly nice, shockingly polite, and had a very good upbringing. I think that shows in the series; that’s who he is. He’s also a guy that’s not used to expressing his emotions. He never went to therapy and that was challenging because I had to keep pressing him for certain answers, or at least to try to discover certain emotions and feelings about a certain period in his life, whatever that period may be, and I had to keep hitting him with questions a few times, cause he wasn’t used to it.”

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Source: USA Today