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A few years ago, the idea of Coleen and Wayne Rooney opening up their Cheshire mansion to a camera crew would have seemed more like one of the fanciful stories that Wagatha Christie herself might have teased on her private Instagram account, to see whether someone was sharing such a blatantly out-of-character update with the tabloids.
The couple, who are now appearing in Disney’s The Real Rooneys, have always been comparatively publicity-shy compared to other footballing families. Especially Coleen, who was clearly bruised by the relentless media attention that fell on her as the teenage girlfriend of an Everton and England prodigy in the mid-Noughties – and again by the scandals surrounding her husband’s various indiscretions.
But in the wake of her “Wagatha” court battle victory against fellow England WAG Rebekah Vardy, the accompanying Disney documentary and a stint on I’m a Celebrity, Coleen now seems to be tentatively enjoying the glow of the spotlight – and it suits her. “Coleen’s stock is getting stronger by the day,” one of their team comments as the cameras follow her through a business meeting with Primark.
The title of the family’s new 10-episode series might be a bit of a stretch – by this point, we’ve all figured out that there’s not much “real” about reality TV. In the first few instalments, at least, truly frank conversations about their much-dissected marriage are rare.
It can also hardly be a coincidence that this presumably lucrative project got the go-ahead around the same time that Wayne was let go from his managerial gig at Plymouth Argyle. “We spoke about her doing more work, not me getting sacked,” Wayne grins good-naturedly when one of the filmmakers asks him about his wife becoming the main breadwinner. At one point, he jokingly asks his manager if he can land him a spot on The Masked Singer. He hardly needed to worry, though – since filming wrapped, he ended up as the straight-talking breakout star of the BBC’s World Cup coverage, making ill-advised vows to row down the River Mersey if Norway beat Brazil (they did, and he ended up tackling New York’s Hudson River instead) and speaking for the nation when he branded the closing ceremony as “crap”.
Either way, the show manages to run rings around the more plodding football family offerings that have graced our screens recently, including ITV’s tedious programme about their former foes, the Vardys, and Amazon’s Meet the Owens, a series so wrenchingly dull that it left viewers with precisely zero desire to ever meet said Owens.
That’s because Wayne and Coleen come across as funny and likeable, and their brood of four boys – Kai, 16, Klay, 13, Kit, 10 and Cass, eight – are pleasingly chaotic. A neon sign bearing the words “welcome to the mad house” appears in one of their many tastefully greige rooms, and feels apt. If their series isn’t entirely no holds barred, the couple seem willing to give just enough of an insight into their life behind the scenes to satiate our nosiness.
Almost immediately, the show’s beats are established. Coleen is constantly juggling work and family, with an understated sense of humour and good comic timing: as soon as she sits down for a to-camera testimonial, telling the producer that “it’s nice just having time for me”, we hear one of the boys yelling for her, prompting the raising of an immaculate eyebrow.
Wayne, meanwhile, is cheery and laidback, sometimes to an extent that appears to infuriate his wife. His go-to tactic for weaselling his way out of an argument with Coleen, he admits, is “annoying [her] and making [her] laugh at the same time”. It’s spoken like a man with plenty of experience doing so: when one of his interviewers suggests that he could write a manual about being in the dog house, so to speak, he quips that he’s “on my third book”.
It’s all a refreshing counterbalance to snobby past portrayals of Wayne as some kind of dullard – although there is a bit of “what is he like!” style eyerolling at his habit of late lie-ins, and his antipathy for wearing suits (“FA Cup finals, funerals and weddings” only, he says). He’s also quite the history buff, regaling his two youngest sons with facts about the Second World War during a visit to Poland.
On the same trip, Coleen gets side-tracked by the gift shop after they’ve been shown through Krakow’s salt tunnels. While she and the kids root through massive pencils and crystals, her world-famous husband stands around looking bored out of his mind, clutching the football trophy made from salt bestowed on him by their guide. It’s a very funny image – gift shop tedium is a great leveller.
Despite this momentary saltiness, though, the pair come across as a couple that genuinely like each other, for all of their tumultuous history. With the Beckhams currently mired in intra-familial feuding, this feels like the Rooneys’ bid to become football’s first family – as far as tryouts go, it’s a winning play.
