Since taking part on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity… Coleen Rooney’s star value has shot through the roof and eclipsing that of her husband, footballing legend Wayne Rooney
Coleen Rooney has told how she now gets more public attention than husband Wayne after her ‘ I’m a Celebrity’ triumph.
The ‘Queen of the Jungle’ is said to have agreed a £10m deal for a fly-on-the-wall TV series featuring life ‘at home with the Rooneys’. Coleen, 38, has been humbled by the ‘positivity’ of well-wishers after her runner’s up spot on the hit ITV show with Ant and Dec. She joked: “Even on school runs, Wayne has passed his sell by date so no one has got a clue (about him). But then all of a sudden we get kids going ‘oh Coleen Rooney!
She told an audience ‘you will be seeing a lot more of me’, a clear nod to the deal for the new Disney+ series. It will see cameras roll on her home life with England legend Wayne and sons Kai, 15, Kit, 11, Klay, eight, and six-year-old Cass.
She is expected to earn around £5m, with another £5m going to production company Lorton Entertainment, which made her previous show, ‘Coleen Rooney: The Real Wagatha Story’.
Coleen says she’s more famous than her husband Wayne now (
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Coleen’s reps are in talks with Disney+ and Amazong (
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Rachel Joseph
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Disney+ has reportedly outbid rivals Amazon for the series. Speaking at an event in Manchester, Coleen said: “My life is constantly hectic. Nothing has changed from last year having four, well, five boys, since last year in the jungle. It’s been busy and it’s going to get even busier.”
She added: “I’ve got a few things up my sleeve, you’ll be seeing a lot more of me.” She went on to describe how, after years of United legend husband Wayne in the limelight, she gets the attention on the school run.
The hard working mum has been surprised by how many people watched her in the jungle and now want to stop for a chat. “I didn’t realise how big the audience was,” she said. “I get parents come up to me saying ‘aw, we got our family back together on the couch to watch it’ and that’s lovely to hear.
Coleen was speaking at the Julie Perry Events International Women’s Day charity lunch (
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Rachel Joseph)
“That’s the thing I really take from it.” Asked for some behind-the-scenes secrets from the set, she said one night in a storm was so bad they were ushered into a hut with a rat.
The scene did not appear on screen, but she added: “That’s what I was surprised about, how real it is. I thought someone would come in and help us when we couldn’t light the fire at the start. But no, no we had to light the fire. You don’t see a person until you go out on a trial. If you run out of toilet roll, they say ‘step outside’ and put it on a bench and then say ‘please enter.’
“One night, we had the worst weather to date, it must have been really early hours, these security men woke us up and said ‘you need to go in the hut’. There were 10 of us in this hut and there was a rat in there. It was roasting, we sat for an hour and 45 minutes until the lightning went off. By Day Three, I thought ‘what have I done here?’
Coleen was hugely popular on the ITV show (
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ITV/REX/Shutterstock“There were all these big personalities. I thought ‘what am I bringing to this jungle?’ I’m just me.” She had pledged not to sing karaoke, as she knew her friends would be annoyed if she did.
She laughed: “You fill out forms, they say ‘name your karaoke songs’ but I’ve never done karaoke, I don’t get up on the mic. I would have picked a jungle trial over karaoke. I knew if my girls had seen me on karaoke, they’d say ‘what are you doing getting up with them when you don’t with us’. I just went there to be myself.”
Coleen’s representatives are believed to have been in talks with Disney+ and rivals Amazon for months over her new series. They were keen to capture the Rooneys following the runaway success of the documentary featuring David and Victoria Beckham.
It was one of the most popular shows on Netflix last year, attracting a huge worldwide audience of more than 200m. Viewers are said to be fascinated by the home lives of millionaire footballers. Last week, the Mirror told how ‘Wagatha’ rival Rebekah Vardy could also be seen in a fly-on-the-wall TV series
The 43-year-old, married to Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, is being lined up by production company Fremantle. Coleen was speaking to an audience of female entrepreneurs and stars at an annual International Women’s Day celebration in Salford last week. It included fellow footballers’ wives Annie Kilner, former partner of England star Kyle Walker, Kaya Jones, wife of former Man Utd star Phil, and Lisa Carrick, wife of Middlesbrough boss Michael.
TV star Olivia Attwood, and Real Housewives of Cheshire’s Tanya Bardsley, Seema Malhotra, Nicole Sealey and Nermina Pieters-Mekic were also guests. Coleen was runner-up to McFly star Danny Jones, but the audience cheered when host Danielle Nicholls described her as ‘Jungle Queen’ and said: “We all think you were robbed!” Organiser Julie Perry said after the event: “It’s inspiring to see so many entrepreneurial women come together to celebrate one another.
