Wait, Tegan and Sara Had a Fanatical Catfishing Stalker?

Photo: Ryan Emberley/Getty Images for Disney

Tegan and Sara Quin are getting real about their experience with “Fake Tegan,” a stalker that the twin sisters learned in 2011 was using their email accounts, unreleased demos, passport photos, and even their mother’s medical information to pretend to be Tegan and fool dozens of fans. “It was heavy to carry at the time,” Tegan told Rolling Stone in a recent interview, noting that catfishing as a concept wasn’t as understood then. “Now, I feel like I can expel some of the grief and fatigue and frustration and guilt and responsibility because I have context and so does the world on what this is. But back then, I just felt ashamed and just thought, ‘Please let it end.’” She recalled feeling “anxious” about her safety on the night she found out about the impersonator, even pushing her dresser in front of the door since her partner was away and she was alone in that apartment for the first time. Sara also remembered feeling so “paranoid” at one point that she thought she was going to have to write her new email address down on paper and physically mail it to her managers.

Tegan enlisted the help of filmmaker Erin Lee Carr to “find the person stalking her and terrorizing her fans and community for over fifteen years,” per an official synopsis of the documentary Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara, which drops on Hulu on October 18. In a trailer, a sound bite teases that people “from all over the world” came forward to say they had been corresponding with Tegan for years. A partial screenshot hints at “pretty personal, explicit things,” and interviewees — in apparent reference to their relationships with Fake Tegan — describe “it” feeling “more sexual” and “very real.” We also learn that the singers began to question the people around them, wondering if they were being hacked by someone they knew. “Fake Tegan systematically destroyed my life,” Tegan says.

Tegan suggested to Rolling Stone that the project has brought her some closure, given her “complicated relationship” with the fans who thought they were talking to her. “The victims are victims and it’s awful it happened. It’s a violation,” she said. “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.” Whoever that catfish was, their true identity is not revealed in Fanatical. “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.”