David Beckham: My Side

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People think he’s this beautiful guy, that everything was handed to him. Not true. He worked his way up and he could have been crushed by what happened to him in 1998 – but he wasn’t. He’s one of the strongest people I know.” Stevens learned that Brian Cox, the Scottish actor who played Logan Roy, is friends with Ferguson and used that relationship to get on the good side of the famously irascible football manager. “Brian signed a copy of Fergie’s book which had just come out and I gave it to Sir Alex. That helped get more time with him. And he knew our show. He asked me ‘Why aren’t you going to do a fifth season?’ I told him because it’s over, man.” He attributes this to the "family" dynamic at Old Trafford and throughout the documentary calls Ferguson a "father figure". I loved the game more than anyone has ever loved it," he smiled. "I know it's not true but I think I loved it more than anyone."

After being signed by Alex Ferguson as a youth team player, moving from London to Manchester, he came through the youth ranks alongside "The Golden Generation" with the likes of: Giggs, Butt, Scholes and the Neville brothers.Soon after his arrival at the Bernabeu, former Manchester United assistant coach Carlos Queiroz was appointed head coach.

Getting the attention and becoming a celebrity was different to what I wanted," Ferguson said. "Getting David to keep his feet on the ground became more difficult." The Real Wagatha Story: Most interesting aspect of new documentary is the woman at the centre of it ] I was aching," he said. "I was hurting. I'd roll out of the bed in the morning because I was in so much pain." So how did it come to pass, with all due respect, that a know-nothing American was the right fit to tell the life story of England’s leading twinkle-toed pretty boy? Three reasons. First, Stevens is not just an actor, whose CV includes a notorious and regretted brown face performance in the 1986 film Short Circuit but also regular turns in Wes Anderson movies (most recently as Detective #1 in Asteroid City). He’s also a documentary-maker. His 2009 film about dolphin hunting in Japan, The Cove, won an Oscar. In 2010, he collaborated with DiCaprio on the climate crisis documentary Before the Flood. I wish there was a pill you could take that could erase some memories," he said. "I made a stupid mistake and it changed my life."

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Hold on. Fergie? But isn’t the former Manchester United manager an avatar of Succession’s Logan Roy? “You’ve got him all wrong,” says Stevens. “I was really scared to meet him. But I came to love the guy.”