Brooklyn Beckham's new fan used to be David's friend. Is the truce over?

Mark Wahlberg held a bottle of hot sauce up to his phone camera and said a few words that the Daily Mail says may have just ruined a family peace.

"Sweet Jalapeno, my boy Brooklyn!"

That is the post, according to the Mail's Alison Boshoff. It went up on Wahlberg's Instagram Stories this week. It shows the Hollywood star spicing up plain grilled chicken with Cloud23, the hot sauce Brooklyn Beckham started in 2024.

It sounds harmless. It is not, if you know who Wahlberg used to be to Brooklyn's dad.

What did Mark Wahlberg actually post?

The clip is short. Wahlberg, 55, pours the sauce on chicken, then shows the distinctive bottle to the camera and names Brooklyn as "my boy."

The Mail says he is also using the sauce in recipes at Wahlburgers, his burger chain. It began in 2011 and has more than 30 locations.

Brooklyn, 27, then teamed up with the restaurant brand to promote the product, the Mail reports.

For readers who just want the headline, here is the Mail's take. The paper says Brooklyn "persuaded" a former friend of David's to back his sauce, and that the move is another pointed public "diss" aimed at his father.

That is the Mail's reading. Nobody in the family has said it out loud.

Why would that bother David Beckham?

Because Wahlberg and David were once close.

The Mail says David signed a deal in 2020 with Wahlberg's fitness company, F45 Training. The two men were close enough that their families holidayed together in the summer of 2022.

Then it went wrong. In October 2022, David's company sued F45 for a total of $18.8 million over the deal. David claimed he was owed $14.3 million in damages and a further $4.5 million under his contract. The fight was about shares he said he had been promised.

It was settled out of court in 2024. F45's statement said the case ended with a "mutual business decision."

So the star whose fitness firm got sued is now holding up a bottle for David's eldest son. The Mail puts it this way: "battle lines have been drawn, and the action star has picked his side."

Is there a Peltz link too?

Yes, and the Mail says it makes the sting worse.

Wahlberg has been friends with Brooklyn's billionaire father-in-law, Nelson Peltz, for many years. He also played the father of Brooklyn's wife Nicola in the 2014 film Transformers: Age of Extinction.

Back then, Wahlberg said he had known Nicola "since she was like 13." Brooklyn, says the Mail, is "once again leaning into Team Peltz and away from his own family."

Photo: Eva Rinaldi / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

What does the hot sauce have to do with David's shirt?

This is the part that makes people go back and read the label.

The Mail says the name Cloud23 "is a warm nod to Brooklyn's father." A company spokesman said last year that it refers to David's number 23 shirt at Real Madrid and LA Galaxy, inspired by NBA legend Michael Jordan.

Brooklyn named his sauce after his father's shirt. Months later he told the world he wanted no part of his father's world.

Now the bottle has a guest star who has a courtroom story with that same father.

Did David try to make peace this week?

According to the Mail, he may have.

Boshoff writes that David appears to have been "trying to make peace" by liking one of Brooklyn's posts from Paris Fashion Week. There was no like back. Brooklyn has blocked his entire family on Instagram, which the Mail calls the most public of snubs.

Then came the sweatshirt. Brooklyn wore a top from Justin Bieber's label Skylrk that read "It's not clocking to you." That is slang for "you're not getting it."

The Mail calls it an apparent response to his father's like. Brooklyn has not said so.

Famous families falling out in public is nothing new, as the Brad Pitt and Pax story shows. Here is how this one looks from the start, using dates from the Daily Mail's reporting.

Photo: Kunal Shah / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

Who has picked which side?

The Mail names the friends who have chosen. Here is the scoreboard as it stands in the paper.

What happened in Paris?

Both camps were in the same city on the same weekend.

The Mail says David, Harper, Romeo and Cruz sat in the front row of Victoria's show at the Conciergerie. Brooklyn and Nicola were near the Louvre, with the Peltz family.

The pair skipped the show. Afterwards, Victoria posted about feeling "so blessed" to have everyone else by her side. David praised her too, writing that the family were "so proud."

One source told the Mail's Katie Hind: "It feels like there is some trolling going on." The same source said Brooklyn and Nicola "made sure they were seen everywhere" thanks to a certain paparazzi agency. The source added there is "absolutely no chance of any olive branches."

Another friend of the family told the Mail that Brooklyn "is always missed" at big Beckham get-togethers, and that "he has chosen this to be the way it is."

Does anyone still think peace is near?

The Mail's own headline says it looked that way until this week. Friends now say there is "no end in sight at the moment."

In January, Brooklyn said he found peace in a life away from his "inauthentic" and "performative" family. The Mail says people close to him find it stressful when his parents mention him on social media, even for birthdays and Christmas. Boshoff also says she reported months ago that he asked them to contact him only through lawyers.

And the same night as the Wahlberg post, Brooklyn put out a loved-up clip. He gave Nicola a piggyback through a car park, with Lana Del Rey's "Video Games" playing over it.

One bottle, named after one shirt number, is now in the hands of the star whose fitness firm David once sued. Whether Brooklyn planned that, nobody outside the family can say.