Coleen Rooney has opened up about the toll that the Wagatha Christie trial took on her, revealing it “stripped of [her] character” and inflicted serious anxiety upon her. Speaking candidly about her experience during the court battle against Rebekah Vardy, which stemmed from her accusation of Ms Vardy leaking stories to the press – an allegation that the High Court declared “substantially true” – Coleen confessed to feeling “ashamed” throughout the process.
The mum-of-four, who has faced challenges in the public eye before including issues within her marriage and the tragic loss of her sister, starred in her in Disney+ documentary ‘Coleen Rooney: The Real Wagatha Story’, which dropped on the streaming platform in August of last year. Ahead of Coleen competing in this year’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me out of Here! the series is now also available to watch on ITVX, and will air on ITV2 next month.
One poignant moment in the series sees Coleen share: “Obviously, I’ve been through other difficult times in the public eye, especially with my marriage and the death of my sister. I’ve always held myself together but dealt with it in private, because it’s a private situation. For example, with my marriage, I can sit down with my husband in the house and deal with that. I can sit down with my family and we can console each other.”
She added: “I couldn’t sit down with Rebekah in a room and deal with it. From when she issued the court letter, it was all dealt with in the public eye. It was out of my control. While other times have been heartbreaking and upsetting, this was stressful.”
The 38-year-old revealed that the entire ordeal caused her a great deal of distress, both emotionally and physically. Coleen, who suffers from reactive arthritis, a condition causing inflammation in various joints, experienced a severe flare-up due to the stress, as reported by the Mirror.
She confessed: “It stripped me of me, of my character, and I just didn’t want to socialise with people at all. I was completely in my own world. I would be on the phone crying and crying, saying to Paul [Stretford] our manager, ‘I don’t know if I can do this anymore’, and there were also times when I’d be about to say ‘Just give her what she wants’, but then something would drive me to say, ‘Coleen, you’re not being true to yourself, carry on.'”.
“Wayne was really supportive all the way through, telling me, ‘You’ve done nothing wrong, carry on and tell the truth and people will see you for you’. It was those comments that would pick me up. I was hoping that we could settle the case and we wouldn’t have to go to court.”
“I wasn’t afraid of what was going to come up, as everything in our lives has been played out in the media, but I was scared of having to stand up and argue my case in court – that is not me. I would rather do it more quietly and sit around a table. A lot of people thought I’d taken Rebekah to court, but she drove the whole thing.”
Coleen’s new series focuses on the court trial as well as other aspects of her life. She admitted that just before the case started, she felt “ashamed”.
She continued: “The lowest point was when the court case was getting close. I’ve never stepped into a courtroom before, and was so scared of getting on that stand. Even though I knew what I believed, it seemed like I was putting on a show for the whole country.”
“I felt ashamed, and I tried to do everything I could to get out of going to court. But for that to happen, I’d have had to lie and take back what I said in my Instagram post, and I couldn’t do that. But I couldn’t focus on anything else in life either, and even though I’m not a massive worrier, this really got to me.”