Acast Classics: Interview with Carrie Jade Does Not Exist

Carrie Jade Does Not Exist was released in 2023 from Always True Crime. Hosted by Sue Perkins and Katherine Denkinson, the podcast follows the story of a woman who took on multiple identities and was able to infiltrate numerous people’s lives.

In 2026, Carrie Jade Does Not Exist was selected as one of the four inaugural Acast Classics alongside West Cork, The Witness and Sweet Bobby. In this interview, journalist and co-host, Katherine Denkinson, talks to us about her experience making the podcast, working with Sue Perkins and the legacy the show has garnered since its release.

‍

How did you get involved in the podcast Carrie Jade Does Not Exist?

‍

The story I picked up in, I think, twenty-twenty-two with Vice World, what was Vice World News. As I was writing that, Emma Kennedy, a very well-known comedy writer, got in touch with me on Twitter. And she's like “I'm following this story; it's fascinating. I'm friends with Sue Perkins and she'd love to be involved in this. Have you thought about a podcast or something?” And I was like, “my god, yeah, let's have a look at that then”. She asked, “can I introduce you to Sue?” And I'm like, “yes please, let's let's do that!”. From there the podcast just spiralled out.

‍

It'd be really interesting to know how you found working with Sue, particularly this different tone of Sue Perkins that the audience might not know or expect from her.

‍

It was fantastic. It was really good. I've never worked with anybody who's that well-known, on that level of doing what they do. So it was fascinating. It was terrifying. I'm turning up thinking, “Am I gonna embarrass myself? Is this really famous person gonna think, my god, who are you? What are we doing?” But no, it was really great to work with her and just to work with someone who understands what they're doing so well. Because, I mean, this was my first podcast. I was learning all of this. I was learning how to write a podcast as I wrote the podcast. To get in the studio with Sue and see her obvious expertise made it a really good experience.

‍

One of the things that I found was that the show doesn't shy away from the details of the case and the things that make it so fascinating, but equally it ensured a sensitivity around the human beings involved. How was that balance important to keep and how did you guys maintain that?

‍

To be honest, that balance was important from the start, from the very beginning of the article. You know it's, whatever this woman turned out to be, whoever Carrie Jade turned out to be, we're not doing some tabloid takedown, we're not doing a “look at this crazy person” thing. This has to be sensitively done, this has to be done within the understanding of mental health, within the understanding that people have lives outside of their one viral moment, and you know, not wanting to create a situation that made things worse for anybody. We don't want to make things worse for the victims, we definitely don't want to send a baying mob after Carrie Jade/Samantha Cookes. So it was really important that we kept that balance throughout.

‍

It is a fascinating story of deception. What do you think attracts people to these sorts of stories?

‍

I think because it is such an ordinary human story. You know, lots of women have suffered from child loss, lots of women have been in a position of poor mental health, have been in Carrie Jade/Samantha Cookes’ position in life. Not all of them have taken her route out of it. And it's a very, very different way to go about things. Lots of people have been in that situation but they haven't all decided to scam half of Ireland for ten years in the process. You know, lots of people have had difficulty with, say, the police or the family court system - which is again something she experienced - but they haven't reacted in the way that she did. So I think from that there's very much a human interest of, well, “what's different about this woman? Why did she do this? Why did she react this way?, Why did she take her personal tragedies and push them out into the lives of everybody she met?”

‍

This podcast has been deemed worthy of being an Acast Classic. Did you feel when you were recording that this felt like a special podcast?

‍

I mean, I was pleased with the work. I was pleased with the reaction I got to the written work, to the article that started it all. It wasn't until the podcast really got out there and kicked off that I began to see, you know, my god, people actually really like this. People are really connecting to this. People are really understanding the story as well. The feedback I got was people saying, “thank you for treating the mental health issues with sensitivity”, “thank you for referring to the truth about this specific condition”, “thank you for explaining Huntington’s”. So it's like this is actually reaching more and more people than I sort of expected it to because as a new podcaster I had no idea how well this would do. Other than Sue Perkins being in it - people are going to like it for that - ix t was absolutely fascinating to see people really, really connecting with this. It was lovely.

‍

Talking about the interaction with the show, what do you hope that people get from this podcast when they're listening?

‍

I hope they get the three-dimensionalness of it. I hope they get a three-dimensional understanding of who Samantha Cookes was as a person and of how this was allowed to happen and how people got sucked into it. It's not a case of, she was a big evil scammer and they were completely stupid. These were intelligent women being sucked in by another intelligent woman. I think the complexity is important to me - that people understand that these stories aren't two-dimensional bad-person/good-person.

‍

What do you personally think makes a “classic” podcast?

‍

Honestly, I have no idea. I was really flattered to be voted for this. I think classic is something that's timeless, something that's going to last, a story that will resonate outside of its current time. So in five years, ten years, there'll still be people who can look at this and go, “yeah, those people…”. This thing has happened before; this thing will happen again, unfortunately. 

‍

Carrie Jade Does Not Exist has been selected as an Acast Classic; listen wherever you get your podcasts