Casey Donovan has opened up about the extraordinary details that let to her being catfished for over half a decade by her best friend.
In a revealing interview with Andrew Denton last night, the Australian Idol winner explained how in 2014 she fell in love with a man named ‘Campbell’, only to find out he didn’t exist and was invented by her friend Olga.
An anonymous, out-of-the blue phone call on Australia Day marked the beginning of the ordeal.
Casey became so besotted with ‘Campbell’ – who she conducted a phone relationship with for six years – that she was eventually coerced into sleeping with Olga, in the hopes of finally meeting her lover.
Retelling her first meeting with Olga, Casey explained:
“Campbell was going to pick me up from the airport, would you believe he didn’t turn up?” she told Denton on Interview.
“He sent his friend Olga instead – I’d spoken to Olga on the phone because they were at a party. She came with a teddy bear and a big card that said ‘I love you'(from Campbell)”.
As Olga and Casey’s friendship grew, the singer grew more and more desperate to meet ‘Campbell,’ but her only connection with him besides the phone calls was her friendship with Olga.
“She was like a bulldog. Like just staunch. She was a woman on a mission, but also extremely likeable, very friendly,” Casey explained of Olga’s character.
“I didn’t get a weird vibe from her… She was Campbell’s mate.”
It was Olga who Casey – who identifies as straight – had her first sexual experience with, at Campbell’s request.
“I was just willing to do anything to see him,” she told Denton.
“My intuition was saying ‘this isn’t right, don’t be a d*ckhead’, but I had put so much effort and emotion and time and invested in this, that he had to be real. He had to.”
She explained that Campbell had asked her to have sex with Olga, and then tell him about it over the phone.
“It nearly killed me. I don’t want anyone to have to go through something like that ever,” she said
“I was doing everything to prove to myself that there was the slightest chance that he could have been real.”
“The sexual encounter with Olga… he was like do that, then we’ll all get together and do that together,” she says before visibly cringing and exclaiming, “That’s too much,” to the crowd.
“But um… It was a seed. It was planted… We were in her room and then she just kind of tried it on and I was like ‘oh, this is happening’ and then ‘oh, that happened’.
“It was weird and I was… you know,” she trailed off.
“It really stuffed with my head. There were so many things happening, I didn’t know which way was up.”
Reflecting on Olga’s motivation, Casey said she wondered if her friend was driven by repressed sexual desire.
‘I don’t know if she was a closeted lesbian that didn’t understand her sexuality so she tried to make other people feel like they had to do that,’ she said.
The truth was only revealed when Casey’s manager, Jason intervened.
‘We [Jason and Casey] went and picked her up and were driving to Campbell’s house,’ she explained.
‘We were driving and Jason was asking all these questions and [Olga] just sat in the back of the car in silence.
‘It took every bit of my strength to not reach over in that car and just snap carrots, basically.’
Extraordinarily, Casey says she has learned to forgiven Olga.
‘I think I have forgiven her – there’s some anger there definitely but I had to let it go to move forwards,’ she said.
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