Coleen Rooney has said she was “really shocked” at how “big” the reaction was to a post she made about Rebekah Vardy which led to a high-profile libel battle.
In the post, the wife of former footballer and current Birmingham City manager Wayne Rooney, claimed that 41-year-old Vardy was the source behind three “false” stories in The Sun featuring fake details she had posted on her private Instagram stories to figure out who was leaking the information.
The fake stories Rooney planted featured her travelling to Mexico for a “gender selection” procedure, her planning to return to TV and the basement flooding at her new home.
Vardy, wife of Leicester City footballer Jamie Vardy, sued Rooney for libel but lost the High Court battle after the judge found Rooney’s claims to be “substantially true”.
Discussing the public reaction to the post on BBC One’s The One Show, Rooney said: “I knew there’d be attention but not the level it got. I was really shocked at how big it got.”
Speaking on whether she still stands by the post, she added: “They were my words and I stick by them today and that was something that I continued with.
“It was tough, there was times where I just wanted it to go away but that’s what I had to do, I had to just battle on.”
“It was so stressful”, she added.
“I feel like a massive cloud’s been lifted now and even though I was there physically looking after the children, mentally I just wasn’t so now I just feel so grateful to be present again and to be there with the kids, both physical and mentally.”
Rooney appeared on the BBC show to discuss the new three-part docuseries Coleen Rooney: The Real Wagatha Story premiering on Disney+ on Wednesday which offers Rooney’s own perspective on the events surrounding the case.
The trial had been dubbed Wagatha Christie in reference to the popular mystery writer and the term Wag meaning “wives and girlfriends” of high-profile footballers.
In Rooney’s October 2019 post on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, where she initially made her claims about Vardy, she wrote: “Over the past five months I have posted a series of false stories to see if they made their way into the Sun newspaper. And you know what, they did!”
She added: “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/individual it’s come from.
“I have saved and screenshotted all the original stories which clearly show just one person has viewed them.
“It’s …… Rebekah Vardy’s account.”