Inside Tribeca X: Brooklyn Beckham Pitched Hot Sauce, Oscar Winners Got Real, and One YouTuber Announced She’s Walking the Grand Canyon

The Tribeca Festival’s marquee brand-and-culture summit packed its first day with stars, strategy, and a few things actually worth remembering

Brooklyn Beckham speaks during the “ From Passion to Product: Building a Culinary Brand That Lasts” portion of Tribeca X — 2026 Tribeca Festival at Spring Studios on June 08, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival)

The first thing you notice about Tribeca X is that it refuses to behave like a typical industry event. Monday’s opening day at Spring Studios in Manhattan moved from Oscar-winning screenwriters to artisan hot sauce branding to a tightrope walk across the Grand Canyon with a momentum that suggested someone deliberately designed a day where no two consecutive sessions would feel remotely the same. Mission accomplished.

Perhaps the most anticipated conversation centered on Danya Jimenez and Hannah McMechan, the screenwriters behind Netflix’s most-watched film of all time and the owners of two shiny Academy Awards, who spoke with disarming candor about what it costs to stay culturally specific when studios would almost always prefer something safer and more broadly palatable. McMechan’s advice to Gen Z creatives carried real weight: stay true to your voice, because a distinct one is what survives. Which is, I believe, more useful guidance than anything you’d absorb in most development meetings.

(L-R) Brooklyn Beckham, Jeff Day, and Claire Saffitz speak during the “ From Passion to Product: Building a Culinary Brand That Lasts” portion of Tribeca X — 2026 Tribeca Festival at Spring Studios on June 08, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival)

Brooklyn Peltz Beckham, who has spent the last few years convincing the world that cooking is his truest creative calling since marrying Nicola Peltz in 2022, shared the stage with Cloud23 CEO Jeff Day and cookbook author and YouTube host Claire Saffitz to map out how a premium condiment line lands on Erewhon shelves, which is basically the final boss level of selective grocery retail. “People buy with their eyes,” Beckham said, “so I wanted something that really sticks out on the shelf.” Saffitz, whose food media platform has made her one of the most trusted voices in the space right now, brought a grounded but engaged skepticism that elevated what might otherwise have been a straightforward celebrity brand origin story into something more interesting.

Christina Miller, CEO of Spin Master, offered a steadier wisdom when she spoke about building entertainment ecosystems that survive long enough to become generational, which is rarer than the industry tends to admit. PAW Patrol is heading into its third theatrical feature, and Miller was characteristically unsentimental in explaining why longevity is still possible: “Good storytelling never goes out of style.” The entertainment graveyard is cluttered with franchises that couldn’t say the same.

Christina Miller speaks during the “Passing The Torch: Storytelling Across Generations in a Changing World” portion of Tribeca X — 2026 Tribeca Festival at Spring Studios on June 08, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival)

Elizabeth Rutledge, CMO of American Express, dropped perhaps the day’s most striking number: 60% of new global AmEx accounts now belong to Gen Z or millennials. For a brand long associated with corporate expense accounts and country club prestige, that shift means something real. Rutledge framed it as the brand’s evolution from status symbol to cultural access platform, which raises the question of whether prestige can survive democratization, or whether accessibility is precisely what keeps it resilient.

Michelle Khare, creator and host of Challenge Accepted, was mid-discussion about how she’d turned her YouTube channel into a full in-house production company now appearing on the Emmy ballot when she mentioned, almost in passing, that she intends to become the first woman to tightrope walk across the Grand Canyon. On a day full of declarations, that one still managed to land differently.

Chief Johnson, Emory “Vegas” Jones and Eric “Ptah” Herbert attend the “Fade: Culture, Legacy, and The Stories We Carry” portion of the Tribeca X — 2026 Tribeca Festival at Spring Studios on June 08, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Jason Mendez/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival)

Culture and legacy surfaced most powerfully in the afternoon sessions. FADE, a short film produced by Emory Jones and directed by Eric “Ptah” Herbert, used the cultural and emotional weight of the barbershop to explore fatherhood and identity, with PUMA’s Chief Johnson stepping in front of the camera in a film that made a convincing case for what becomes possible when brands invest in genuine creative vision rather than renting cultural credibility.

Cedric the Entertainer sat down with CNN’s Abby Phillip for what was, by most accounts, the most unguarded conversation of the day. Cedric, who is a partner at AC BBQ and founder of Setta Wines, talked about building businesses rooted in Black culinary tradition rather than celebrity novelty. “Celebrity helped us get in the room,” he said. “Then we had to prove we were sincere.” That line applies to roughly half the brand deals announced at any given festival, and everyone in the room knew it.

Abby Phillips and Cedric the Entertainer speak during the “How Brand Can Become Platforms for Culture” portion of Tribeca X — 2026 Tribeca Festival at Spring Studios on June 08, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival)

NFL Films executives Jessica Boddy, Keith Cossrow, and Jodain Massad walked through how the studio is pushing its 60-year storytelling legacy into the WWE, the PGA Tour, and well beyond. Massad offered the day’s most quotable philosophical note: “A human doesn’t need sports to survive, but I think humanity does.” Whether that’s genuine conviction or a very polished content strategy is, perhaps, in the eye of the beholder.

Two cross-generational conversations gave the day an unexpectedly warm undertow. David Droga, Vice Chair of Accenture, joined his son Finn Droga to discuss what holds in storytelling even as the industry reshapes itself around them, while PayPal’s Global CMO Antonio Lucio appeared alongside his daughter Irene Sofia Lucio, an actor, writer, and producer, to examine what passing creative ambitions across generations actually looks like in practice. Both conversations were better for resisting the urge to be inspirational.

Farra Kober and Daniel Kopec speak during the “Closing the Trust Gap: Documentary Storytelling in the Age of AI” portion of Tribeca X — 2026 Tribeca Festival at Spring Studios on June 08, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival)

Microsoft’s Daniel Kopec and producer Rachel Nussbaum asked whether documentary filmmaking can realistically close the trust gap in an era when AI has made authenticity genuinely difficult to verify, and a creator economy panel featuring Joivan Wade, Patreon’s Stephanie Smellie, and TikTok’s Fred Asquith debated the real and stubborn distance between going viral and building something that lasts.

Day two runs today, June 9, and includes Michael Kors in conversation with Tony and Emmy Award-winning actress Judith Light, Planned Parenthood’s Alexis McGill Johnson, WNBA CMO Phil Cook alongside New York Liberty CEO Keia Clarke, filmmaker Dhar Mann, journalist Taylor Rooks, and former Rolling Stone CEO Gus Wenner, among others. If day one set the standard, the follow-up seems unlikely to coast.