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Stalking is a huge problem in celebrity culture, and many people think it’s the price that comes with fame. Filmmaker Erin Lee Carr got to the bottom of Tegan Quinn’s stalker problem in the documentary Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara— where the Canadian popstar learned more about how a person impersonating her deeply affected victims of her fanbase.
A person who claimed to be Tegan started to message and email fans 14 years ago and developed friendships, and even sexual relationships, with the victims. The stalker, known as Fake Tegan, or Fegan, had very sensitive information like passport scans, intimate photos, and their mother’s hospital information.
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As one of the earliest queer twin-indie-pop-group in the early 2000s, Tegan and Sara developed a very tight-knit queer fanbase. “I have a complicated relationship with this story, because I have a complicated relationship with the victims,” Tegan told Rolling Stone about the premise of the documentary. “The victims are victims and it’s awful it happened. It’s a violation. But most of them were out there trying to get my personal information off the internet. And so many of them acknowledged they were violating my privacy too. And I was just able to access so much compassion that it spilled over even to fake Tegan.”
Who is Fake Tegan?
By the end of the film, Erin and Tegan still don’t know the true identity of Fake Tegan. The end credits of the doc say that after an investigative team received over 2000 emails between the Fegans and the victim, they found that one Fegan was based in the UK.
In an interview with Out on Film, Tegan believed that they had to handle the film with care. “Through the making of the film, I certainly was hyperfocused on making sure that we handled this with care,” Tegan explained to Out On Film. “I didn’t want this to be a takedown of our audience, and I certainly didn’t want to ruin anyone’s life. I firmly believe that I know who Fake Tegan is, and when we established that, the desire to go and unmask that person was not there.”
One Fegan suspect that Erin and Tegan confronted was a fan named “Tara.” Tara harrassed fans with information about who Fegan was and wrote incest fan fiction involving the twin musicians. During a heavily emotional call, Tara repeatedly denied that she was Fegan and insinuated that the stalker situation didn’t directly affect Tegan because she was untouchable. Tegan ruled out that “Tara” was Fegan.
“Fake Tegan made me a less trusting person,” Tegan says at the end of the documentary. I’m really proud of the Tegan and Sara community and fans. But fan culture is ‘I wanna know more, I wanna know more, I wanna know more.’ It’s insatiable because you won’t ever know me. Unless you kidnap me and get to know me.”
Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara is available to stream on Hulu.
