Rebekah Vardy interview: ‘I will say it till I’m blue in the face, I didn’t do it’

It was the social media whodunnit that gripped the nation. Kim Kardashian endeavoured to break the internet years previous, but Coleen Rooney achieved it with just a simple ellipsis. 

Suspicious that someone in her inner circle had been sharing intimate details with the press about her, Coleen set a trap to try and catch the perpetrator, posting a number of false stories about herself to Instagram and setting it so that only Rebekah’s account could see them. Three of those stories subsequently appeared in The Sun newspaper. 

Confident she had found the mole in the group, Coleen then shared her findings on Twitter, thus blacklisting Vardy and earning herself the title, “Wagatha Christie”. Vardy responded not long after Rooney’s social media reveal, vehemently denying the allegations and writing, “I’m not being funny but I don’t need the money, what would I gain from selling stories on you?” 

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

And so began one of the most infamous WAG wars in recent history. 

In May, the libel case was brought before the courts. Coleen alleged that it was Rebekah Vardy’s account… but was it Rebekah Vardy? Vardy herself has always denied culpability. A written statement to the court last April suggested that Caroline Watt, Rebekah’s former agent, was “the source of the leak” though Mrs Vardy “did not authorise or condone her”. 

Rooney’s appeal to add Watt to proceedings was denied on the basis that the application had been made too late and would delay the trial otherwise. So, the entire case hinged on whether Rooney could prove that it was Vardy herself who leaked the stories to the press (as opposed to another person acting on her behalf). 

Last week, Mrs Justice Steyn handed her judgement down: Coleen Rooney 1 – Rebekah Vardy 0. “I have found that Ms Vardy was party to the disclosure to The Sun… Ms Vardy knew of and condoned this behaviour, actively engaging in it by directing Ms Watt to the private Instagram account, sending her screenshots of Ms Rooney’s posts, drawing attention to items of potential interest to the press, and answering additional queries raised by the press via Ms Watt,” Steyn noted in her conclusion. 

The court praised Rooney’s evidence as “honest and reliable”, labelling Vardy’s “manifestly inconsistent… evasive or implausible.”

Naturally, Vardy is unwilling to go down without a fight and has since disputed the verdict, describing it as “wrong” and not one she can accept. “I am extremely sad and disappointed at the decision that the judge has reached,” Vardy said in a statement at the time. “It is not the result that I had expected, nor believe was just. I brought this action to vindicate my reputation and am devastated by the judge’s finding.

“The judge accepted that publication of Coleen’s post was not in the ‘public interest’ and she also rejected her claim that I was the ‘Secret Wag’. But as for the rest of her judgement, she got it wrong and this is something I cannot accept.”

Well, if you thought that would be the end of it, how wrong you were, my friend. Still maintaining her innocence, Vardy joined TalkTV host Kate McCann last night for her first interview since the verdict was handed down. “I will say it till I’m blue in the face, I didn’t do it,” Vardy emphasised. “I feel let down by a lot of people, by a lot of things,” she continued. “But most importantly, I feel let down by the legal system.”

The judgment was wrong & I wasn’t involved in leaking any stories to @thesun says #RebekahVardy in an exclusive TV interview to @TalkTV (owned apparently by the owners of @thesun). pic.twitter.com/loIiPQICGf

— Martin Curnow (@mjCurnow) August 3, 2022

Asked about a conversation she had had with her former agent Caroline Watt, Vardy said that it wasn’t something she wanted to talk about. “Purely because I’m so conscious about her mental well-being and how it’s affected her as well,” she explained. Probed as to whether she feels let down by Ms Watt, Vardy responded by saying, “Oh, come on. You can’t ask me that.”

Discussing a myriad of other topics throughout the almost one-hour long interview, Vardy also touched on matters such as health, work and fame. “For me, it’s important to find something that inspires me and something that’s meaningful and something I really, really want to do,” she told Kate, also admitting that she’s since seen a counsellor to help her deal with the horrible anxiety she’s suffered over the past three years. That doesn’t mean she’ll be bowing out of the public eye anytime soon though…

Legal experts now believe Vardy could be facing a hefty £3million (€3.5million) legal bill as she may have to foot the cost of Rooney’s legal fees too, which would total a further £1.5million (€1.7million). “The judge won’t necessarily order Mrs Vardy to cover all of it,” Jack Ridgway of the Association of Costs Lawyers told The Sun. “It is, in fact, rare for a winning party to recover all of their legal costs. As a generalisation, winning parties recover about 70 per cent.”

If interested, you can watch the full 58-minute interview below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5o7XTVHHhYY

Few pop-culture moments have captured the zeitgeist so completely, but Wagatha Christie was a story with all the makings of a hit soap storyline; celebrity, scandal, betrayal. It played out on social media and it will continue to do so, even now after a verdict has been delivered.