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In the now-legendary social media post, Rooney kept us all on our toes as she detailed her predicament and the Hercule Poiret-esque steps she took to uncover the alleged traitor lurking in her midst, signing off with a line now immortalized in pop culture: “I saved and took screenshots of all the original stories, which clearly show that only one person watched them. This is … Rebecca Vardy’s account.”
The powers of deduction! The ellipsis! The strategic use of the word “account”! The greatest minds in Hollywood never could.
Vardy vehemently denied the allegation and launched a defamation case against Rooney, but High Court judge Judge Steyn later ruled in Rooney’s favour.
The Waga Christie dispute, as it was dubbed (a reference to the now-obsolete term WAGs, the wives and girlfriends of famous sportsmen), is the subject of Channel 4’s Vardy v Rooney: Courtroom Drama, a two-part program exploring how the high profile ordeal unfolds.
“I didn’t really have an opinion on it,” said Chanel Creswell, who plays Rooney. “I didn’t really follow it, so I didn’t know the information. I didn’t know who was right and who was wrong. But when I kept seeing him on TV, I thought, “Oh my God, this is getting a little cheesy. This is getting pretty serious. But I didn’t think it would pass that away.”
The series does exactly what it says on the tin: it’s set in the Supreme Court and the dialogue is based on actual transcripts, with “little flashbacks” sprinkled throughout. Most of the details are well known, but “there’s a lot of information that I don’t think people will know,” Creswell said.
“[The vast majority of the time] we see their glamorous lifestyle, but it’s the part we can’t see behind the curtain. This is not the polished article.”
As the trial progressed, a number of extraordinary details surfaced. After Vardy’s agent’s phone was claimed as evidence, it was lost in the waves of the North Sea. On another occasion, Vardy was asked why she did not respond to a press release from her agent, to which she said she was too distracted by Gemma Collins’ face on Dancing on Ice to comment. And let’s not forget Vardy’s remarks about Peter Andre’s “miniature chipola” after a one-night stand a few years ago. I could go on, but I’d be here all day.
The show does “touch on” those comedic moments, but it’s largely played straight, according to Cresswell.
Was there any chance he could meet the woman playing?
“The weather didn’t allow for that, for example. It was a pretty quick turnaround. And I think just out of respect I decided not to. Colleen, I realized, was a private person and I didn’t want to intrude on that. . But I would like to talk to her.
What questions would you ask?
“To be honest, I’d just like to sit down and have a general conversation. I would never pressure her into anything. I would just ask some stupid questions like “Do you believe in aliens? Do you believe in the afterlife?'”
Without that face-to-face meeting, Creswell watched “a lot” of interviews and videos of Rooney to get to know her.
“It was interesting to see her when she was much younger because I feel like that’s a more naive version of her,” she said. “These are her roots. And then obviously as she got a little bit older, I think she probably became a lot more private in her life for different reasons.
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“It must be very strange to be someone who’s just a normal person and then they date someone who explodes but you’re still just a normal person. You had to change your whole structure, the way you live, to marry the love of your life, so I think it must be really hard to find people you can trust 100 percent.
“And the one thing that became very apparent in the transcripts that I read from Colleen was that this was a massive betrayal of trust for her. You think your information is safe and then it’s not. It creates paranoia in your little world. Feel like you’ve been attacked. There’s almost a hint of the phone hacking scandal.”
The role was “one of the most challenging” performances of Creswell’s career, but not for the reason you might expect. There’s obviously an inherent pressure that comes with retelling one of the biggest entertainment stories of recent times, but there wasn’t much room for artistic expression, which she found limiting.
“In terms of creative freedom, I didn’t have much,” she said. “I’m playing someone [real] and I have to stick to it, so I couldn’t make it my own. And it’s quite difficult because she’s in a courtroom situation, so she has to act a certain way. They tell you not to react so much because you’re playing them in a situation where they have to be pretty straight, so there were moments where I felt a bit one-dimensional. There were times when I doubted what I was doing.”
But her biggest concern was not to caricature Rooney, “focusing on just making her a normal person and playing her strong.”
“She’s a mother of four boys, so she’s going to be a strong person,” she added.
Creswell certainly knows a thing or two about the role of resilient women. She made her name as Kelly Jenkins in This Is England, Shane Meadows’ brutal but beautiful drama about a group of working-class friends in the Midlands, for which she won a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress in 2016.
There are rumors of a fourth series set in the 2000s, but no official word from the authorities.
“We were all together recently for Tommo’s [Thomas Turgoose] 30th and we were all asking him [Meadows]and the answer was not no. He definitely has some ideas, but I don’t know [if he’ll do another one]. I told him, “Come on, we’re getting old. You have to hurry. We only have so long in us.
“I’m sure most of us would go back at any opportunity.”
Like all the characters on This Is England, Kelly’s journey takes her to some difficult places. Her father rapes her best friend and her sister Lol, played by Vicki McClure, almost dies of an overdose. “With Kelly, it’s either going really, really well or it’s going really, really dark. I like to play the dark side too. That is what I would ask [in the next series].”
But despite what the character and the project as a whole mean to Creswell, she “can’t look back on it anymore.”
“It’s very personal to me because I’ve been going through a lot,” she added. “The music, what’s going on, it just upsets me so much. But at the time it was like a therapy session, going on set and talking to Shane and acting out that stuff. And it definitely set a very strong footing in my career.
“This is one of those moments. And you can’t knock any of the people involved. Everyone was crazy so I hope we’ll be back.’
If you have been affected by the topics discussed in this article, you can find help and support at www.victimsupport.org.uk and www.rapecrisis.org.uk.
Vardy v Rooney airs tonight on Channel 4 at 9pm. Looking for something else to watch? Check out our TV Guide or Streaming Guide or visit our dedicated Drama Hub for the latest news.
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