It’s been nearly four years since Coleen Rooney opened up her Twitter account one boring October morning and changed our lives by tweeting the immortal passage: “For a few years now someone who I trusted to follow me on my personal Instagram account has been consistently informing The Sun newspaper of my private posts and stories.
“There has been so much information given to them about me, my friends and my family — all without my permission or knowledge. After a long time of trying to figure out who it could be, for various reasons, I had a suspicion.”
This has been a burden in my life for a few years now and finally I have got to the bottom of it...... pic.twitter.com/0YqJAoXuK1
— Coleen Rooney (@ColeenRoo) October 9, 2019
She then detailed her canny investigation technique — blocking individuals one by one from her Instagram story to see if it stemmed the leak — and how it allowed her to isolate the sole offender. She continued: “It's been tough keeping it to myself and not making any comment at all, especially when the stories have been leaked, however I had to. Now I know for certain which account it's come from. I have saved and screenshotted all the original stories which clearly show just one person has viewed them.
And with four words and three ellipses (plus one extra full stop for good measure), she revealed: “It's.......... Rebekah Vardy's account."
For the September issue of Vogue, Rooney went into detail on her experience of being dragged into the trial of the century by Rebekah Vardy who sued Rooney for libel (Rooney won) last year. And with her new Disney+ documentary now out, here’s a look back at everything we learned.
1. She didn’t tell anyone about the bombshell tweet before she tweeted it
In a surprising revelation, Rooney reveals that very little prep went into her bombshell tweet, which signifies how ill-prepared she was for the explosion that would follow it. In fact, like sending a risky text to an ex you know your mates will stop you from sending, she didn’t even tell anyone she was going to post it. “If I want to do sunnin’ – and I know I’ll get talked out of doing sunnin’ – I’ll just go ahead and do it,” she told Vogue. “I didn’t want no one telling me not to do it.”
Instead she woke up late at night, wrote it out with a pencil, paper and rubber, and posted it the next morning. Boom.
2. Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy were never friends
When it comes to Vardy’s betrayal, it didn’t hurt Rooney because they were inseperable, bestie-status close friends (in perhaps the most British way of dismissing a relationship ever, Coleen utters the immortal phrase “I’ve never had a drink with her”). In fact, the only kind of “close friends” status they held was on Instagram, and the main reason Vardy was on Rooney’s alt account was because of their shared WAG status, which almost made it more of a betrayal.
“Yeah, because I felt like she was in the same world as me,” Rooney says in the Vogue interview. “She was in the public eye. I thought she would be protective over that kind of thing.”
Rooney also admits that she has never fallen out with another WAG before and that generally things between the partners of footballers are pretty congenial. But, she affirms, they weren’t mates to begin with: “We would associate,” she says, “because our husbands had played for England together. But she doesn’t live round here. She wasn’t a friend. I’ve never socialised with her.”
3. But Vardy kept trying to get close
Rooney claims that Vardy made consistent attempts to get closer to her, both literally — she once broke FA guidance to sit directly behind her in the stands of an England match — and figuratively. “I’ve been invited to a wedding, a baby shower, which at the time, all them years ago, I thought, ‘Oh, that’s quite nice,’” Rooney told Vogue. “But the fact is, I don’t know yer. I would not invite her – and that’s not me being horrible – I don’t feel like I’m close enough.”
4. Coleen didn’t pre-legal her statement
Remember how Rooney didn’t tell her friends and family about the now-bombshell tweet because she never thought it would be that big of a deal? Well she didn’t get it legalled, either, which gave her quite the fright when Vardy announced she would be taking legal action just hours after Coleen posted her tweet.
“You see social media people calling people out in such nasty ways and I was thinking I wasn’t that nasty,” she said in her Vogue interview. “I’ve never been in a legal case before so for me it was scary [...] What a horrible experience.”
5. She was ‘disgusted’ by Vardy using her late-sister as a pawn
During the trial, much of the key communication between Vardy and her team was unrecoverable due to a number of dubious reasons, like how one of her assistants lost her phone when it fell in the North Sea while on holiday. But of the text and Whatsapp messages that remained, some were pretty damning.
Most notably, a message exchange between Vardy and her agent where the two debate Vardy reaching out to Rooney on the anniversary of the death of her sister, Rosie, who died of a rare brain disorder in 2014. This was not a well intentioned check-in, but an excuse to get back in contact with Rooney after she had blocked Vardy on Instagram not long beforehand.
“The texts knocked me sick,” Coleen told Vogue of this revelation. “They were just another level. When I was reading them I was thinking: the evilness and the hatred that they had for someone that they don’t even know.”
6. Coleen and Wayne looked at memes from the trial
One of the most memeable moments from the trial came when Wayne Rooney helpfully carried his wife’s Fendi purse into the courtroom during the first day of proceedings. The picture, with a smorgasbord of different captions — though most concerning his PE teacher-esque appearance — went viral, and Coleen revealed via Vogue that she and Wayne particularly enjoyed that meme.
When PE teachers have to teach a bit of Geography. pic.twitter.com/Uez143hHcq
— Alexander Fox (@AlexanderFoxEtc) May 12, 2022
“We were laughing about that one,” she said in the interview. After the picture went viral, Wayne continued to carry the bag for his wife. “I think it was a superstition thing,” she admits.
7. On Wayne’s visits to sex workers...
When addressing her and Wayne’s tumultuous relationship history (he’s been photographed entering brothels, has admitted to infidelity and visiting sex workers on numerous occasions during their relationship) she playfully disregards the past. Joking about something she had told a man in the past, she recalls saying: “‘Well, do you know what your wife gets up to every day and night? At least I know what my husband’s doing!’ It mightn’t be good, but I know. People lie to themselves.”
8. The disney documentary and her book should both be out before christmas
If the details from Coleen’s Vogue interview have got you craving more Wagatha Christie deep cuts, fear not, because more is on the way — and it’ll be this side of 2023, as well. ââ“I am also working with Penguin on my autobiography, which will be out in time for Christmas, which I’m really excited about,” Rooney told Vogue, while the interview also reveals that the three part Disney+ doc is due “later in the year.”
9. When she found out they’d won the court case, she swore for 15 minutes
After years of turmoil and two weeks of anger-inducing trial appearances, Rooney found out that she’d won her court case while sitting in a parked car in a Manchester industrial estate.
“My eldest was doing a campaign for Puma and I had to come out to take the phone call, so I’m sitting in me car in the middle of Manchester in an industrial estate on my own,” she recalled to Vogue. When her lawyer, David Sherbourne, opened the phone call, he simply stated: “We’ve won.” Rooney’s reply? “I swore. I think all I did was swear for the whole quarter- of-an-hour phone call.”
10. She faltered slightly when asked if she’d do it all again
Throughout her Vogue interview, Rooney seems pretty unflappable. She’s a well trained media presence, after all, and she’s talked about this topic enough by now. But one question from interviewer Giles Hattersley does throw her.
To paraphrase: When all is said and done, would you do it again? She repeats herself a few times and seems “uncertain”, according to the interview, but then settles on a defining party line: “You can’t go wrong if you’re telling the truth.” The same sentiment is what won her that court case and landed her those TV and book deals, so we can’t help but agree.
