'Don't play games with a girl who can play better'

Image source, Reuters

The libel case between Rebekah Vardy (left) and Coleen Rooney is to be made into a Channel 4 docudrama

Coleen Rooney broke down in tears discussing her dispute with Rebekah Vardy in a trailer for a documentary on the Wagatha Christie trial.

Describing her struggles during the famous libel case, she said her family noticed a change in her: "My dad said 'you're just not you any more'."

Rooney, the wife of ex-England captain Wayne Rooney, had accused Vardy of leaking stories about her to the press.

The series will be released on Disney+ on Wednesday.

In a dramatic trailer released on Friday by Disney+, she could be seen breaking down in tears while discussing the case.

"It was just constantly on my mind," she said.

Speaking about her original words on Instagram accusing Vardy of leaking private posts to the Sun newspaper, Rooney said in the trailer: "I stick by them."

Rooney came up with a sting operation in 2019, planting fake stories on her Instagram account in an effort to find out who was leaking private information about her to the press.

After clamping down on her privacy settings, Rooney said the only account which had viewed the stories, which later ended up in the Sun, was Vardy.

The sleuthing prompted a huge reaction on social media and led to the case being dubbed "Wagatha Christie" - a reference to Wags (footballers' wives and girlfriends) and the writer Agatha Christie.

"Someone on my personal account was informing the Sun newspaper of my private posts and stories," Rooney told Disney+. "I needed evidence. I had to set a trap."

"Don't play games with a girl who can play better," she warns at the end of the preview.

Vardy, wife of Leicester striker Jamie Vardy, denied the allegations and brought the defamation claim against Rooney resulting in the trial last year.

After losing the case, Vardy was expected to pay an estimated £1.5m towards Rooney's legal costs following the ruling.

The highly edited trailer - weaving clips of the documentary's interviews and news footage from the court case - precedes the release of three-part series in which her husband Wayne and her family speak publicly on the case for the first time.

Disney say their "highly anticipated" series will reveal the circumstances leading to Rooney's "infamous Instagram post that broke the internet all the way to Coleen successfully defending herself in one of the UK's highest-profile High Court defamation cases of recent years".