“Okay, who’s ready for a horrifying documentary?” asks director Erin Lee Carr at the Royal Alexandra Theatre Friday night. Her introduction to the world premiere of “Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan & Sara,” at the Toronto International Film Festival, is not hyperbole. Indeed, “Fanatical” is a horror and mystery rolled into one.
“If there’s one takeaway from the film, it’s to listen to your gut,” Tegan says later during the Q&A.
The film — out Oct. 18 on Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ in Canada — is a painstaking investigation into what the Canadian indie-rock duo have endured behind the scenes for 16 years and counting. Carr and her team attempt to track down the identity of the person pretending via and direct message to be Tegan Quin, otherwise referred to as “Fake Tegan” and “Fegan.”
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Tegan and Sara Quin, 42-year-old Canadian identical twins known for such hits as “Closer” and “Walking with a Ghost,” are usually amusing storytellers, their between-song banter filled with quips and self-effacing humor, but there is absolutely nothing funny about “Fanatical.” The documentary shows just how taxing, frightening and violating the ordeal has been on the duo, not to mention their families and some unsuspecting fans (interviewed in the film) who were strung along, excitingly believing they had developed a legit friendship with one of their favorite musicians. In one appalling instance, “Fegan” got flirty and sexually charged, then turned abusive.
The “super terrifying story,” as Tegan calls it at the start of the film, begins in 2008 when a fan, Julie, messages “Tegan” on her profile page and she replies. The imposter started sending her song demos and shared the private information. Building a friendship over time, in 2011 “Fegan” shared a link and password to a drive that included the sisters’ passport photo pages. It “felt off,” Julie says in the film, so she messaged Tegan and Sara’s management at the time. “She has no idea who you are,” came the reply.
Then, “Tegan has a big problem.”
If sharing of their passport, demos, and personal information by the impersonator wasn’t creepy and concerning enough, the catfishing gets even more invasive and bold, when “Fegan” starts reaching out to Tegan and Sara’s fans, building intimate friendships.
Fearing it would get worse if she went public, Tegan kept the hacking and catfishing a secret from the media. But during a Q&A that followed the screening, she said that after hearing about a sophisticated catfisher on the “Sweet Bobby” podcast two years ago, it “unlocked a lot of memories about Fake Tegan that I hadn’t thought about in a while.”
She started writing down her own story, then approached music journalist Jenny Eliscu (a producer on the project) who introduced her to Carr, who has directed some sensitive or personal topics, notably 2019’s “At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal,” 2021’s “Britney vs. Spears,” and2021’s “The Ringleader: the Case of the Bling Ring.”
“I became more confident that they had the compassion and empathy and knowledge to handle this with care,” Tegan said after the screening, “because the most important thing to Sara and I, always, is that we respect our audience. Because I don’t believe we’ll ever get respect back if we don’t respect you first.”
The sisters formed their indie-rock duo in 1995 as teenagers and built a sizeable, dedicated following, especially within the LGBTQ community. They were early adopters of the internet to connect with fans via a website and message board, but Sara “did not like the Internet” and did not embrace it the way Tegan did.
Tegan also talked with fans outside of shows and at the merch tables. The sisters began to wonder if the catfisher was someone they knew. But, while “Fegan” has been damaging to their own sense of safety and trust, “Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan & Sara” is equally a cautionary tale for fans to be extra wary and careful in this age of DMs and now AI.
Tegan said after the screening, “It’s important for me that it doesn’t feel like we are calling out our fandom or fandom in general. I think the vast majority of people on this planet are kind and good, and their curiosity probably lives within the realm of healthiness, but I do think that every artist hits a peak, and the peak of our career happened during this time, and it fanned the fires. It made us very nervous about how to connect online — and very mistrusting.”
Granted, no one is physically harmed in this catfishing story, but “Fanatical” does show the ripple effect on the fans who were duped. One said she could not even listen to their music anymore.
Carr explained in the Q&A that the fans interviewed for the film and who shared their correspondence agreed to do so to help catch the culprit. “I was very clear that it is not at all my purpose to embarrass anybody,” Carr said. “This was an incredibly complex and real portrait of somebody. And so, I said, ‘This is where you’ll be validated in your experience that this felt real.’
“Fake Tegan is still doing this to this very day, we have reason to believe,” she concluded. “And I said, ‘Us making this film will hopefully stop the bleeding.”
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