It’s an interview that we all remember from less than five years ago, but Netflix’s rendition of Prince Andrew’s fatal Newsnight interview, Scoop, will be available on the streaming service on Friday.
In November 2019, the Duke of York sat down with Emily Maitlis to clear the air about his acquaintance with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, defying the royal motto of ‘never complain, never explain’.
Days later, he had resigned from public life as a working member of the Royal Family, such were the terrible implications of his remarks.
Rufus Sewell has donned extensive prosthetics to play Andrew, while Gillian Anderson, from The X Files and The Crown, plays Maitlis, a BBC journalist.
The show’s headliner, however, is Billie Piper as booker-turned-producer Sam McAlister, the woman who secured the once-in-a-lifetime chance for the broadcast.
Maitlis is not involved in Scoop, but I get down with McAlister, Piper, and director Philip Martin to discuss the film before it premieres.
McAlister seems quite comfortable in front of the cameras in a junket set-up, taking the lead early on in our conversation, whilst Martin is more reticent at first and Piper appears almost scared.
They all settle into the talk, though, as McAlister describes the last Newsnight sit-down as merely the ‘denouement’ and ‘approximately 5%’ of the entire narrative. Scoop dives into all of the previous work to see ‘how on earth you make it happen’.
She wrote the book on which the film is based, Scoops: Behind the Scenes of the BBC’s Most Shocking Interviews, which was released in 2022 and will be adapted for Netflix by screenwriter Peter Moffat.
So, of course, this is one of the reasons why the film adaptation is moving so quickly following the events.
However, McAlister offers another argument.
‘This story is still always in our consciousness in terms of the outcome with the interview, but how it happened has not been in our consciousness. So, it’s a way of casting light on the relentless hard work that so many journalists do in trying to bring extraordinary moments like this to the public consciousness.’
Director Martin, 71, was aware of Scoop’s challenges in creating intrigue and excitement for an audience that already knew Andrew’s rather dramatic outcome, but he’s confident the film delivers a fresh perspective on events thanks to its emotional insight into the characters and the story.
‘There have been some wonderful documentaries on this subject already, but what’s exciting about drama is you can get into the headspace of people, you can put the audience in the room with the characters and start to understand why people are making the decisions that they do,’ he explains.
Even now, after finishing the project, he’s fascinated by the fatal Newsnight encounter between the Duke of York and Maitlis.
‘One of the things about the interview that’s still fascinating for me is that Andrew says some amazing things, but a lot of the interview – the audience form their judgement based on looking at him and looking at Emily and figuring that side of things out.
‘So, telling the story, I thought – even though it’s a modern story – there was so much in there, so much that was complicated and challenging and interesting.’
Maitlis may not be associated with the production, but I’m curious if anyone has heard from her about the film and her opinions on it.
A slight delay from the three of them indicates that the journalist has not necessarily been provided with a peek.
‘Not yet!’ says Piper. ‘But she probably wouldn’t have seen it.’
However, it does not appear that anybody is concerned about her appraisal, with Doctor Who actress Piper even anticipating her reaction to their assessment of her career-defining interview.
When McAlister responds that she hopes her former colleague will ‘enjoy it’, the actress adds: ‘Yeah, I’m sure she would absolutely love it.’
‘We’re looking forward to her seeing it,’ chimes in Martin diplomatically, as they all echo each other in a chorus of agreement.
‘I mean, Gillian’s performance is iconic. Emily is a legend, she’s an icon of journalism, and obviously Gillian is a global icon,’ points out McAlister.
‘So what greater compliment could you have than having Gillian play you in a movie about the importance of journalism?’
‘I’m sure Emily will love it and, you know, it was such a pleasure working with her,’ she adds, smoothly.
With Piper, 41, playing the Scoop version of herself, McAlister and the actress have collaborated closely, especially because the veteran TV producer serves as executive producer on the film.
Rather than feel awkward over the real person observing her at work, Piper’s reaction to McAlister’s presence was, in fact, ‘thank goodness!’.
‘Because I didn’t really have the access to many filmed appearances of Sam – there were one or two that I regularly binged,’ she reveals.
‘Gillian [Anderson] probably had a wealth of video clips from Emily [Maitlis], so I spent more time with Sam, one to one, before we started filming, during the rehearsal period. And then on set, as you say – and yes, that’s a gift really, you don’t normally get that access.’
The Bafta and Brit Award nominee laughs that was ‘relieved’ to be able to find the opportunity to ‘constantly just refer back to her or study her without her seeing me’.
McAlister says she was most impressed by Piper’s dedication to perfecting her bouncy walk, which is featured in several establishing shots as the booker strides into BBC headquarters in her black faux fur-collared jacket, complete with Chanel brooch and brandishing a Louis Vuitton handbag.
‘The way you so faithfully did the painful bounce on those very high heels! I apologise if you sue me about your knees,’ McAlister tells Piper, making her chuckle.
‘Every day I would go to the office for so many years like it was a first day. I feel you really got the energy of that optimism that I kept trying to bring to what was sometimes quite a hard job.’
Despite its impressive ensemble and variety of oddly depicted notable people, Scoop revolves around Piper’s McAlister.
Her desire to secure the interview stems from a basic and somewhat dull pitch email regarding Andrew’s Pitch@Palace entrepreneurial effort (journalists, take note).
Martin worked hard to strike a balance between Scoop’s meticulous attention to detail in its narrative and the ambition to generate appealing entertainment.
There was ‘a continual debate’ among everyone about the method, with the director also noting that McAlister was (naturally) quite valuable to have around, alongside a live narrative in the public arena with numerous sources in various places, such as the palace and elsewhere at the BBC.
‘We’re trying very hard to make it as truthful as we can and as based around the real world. People know Buckingham Palace, people know the BBC – they see it – so you have to make sure that your recreation of that is convincing,’ Martin accepts.
However, he becomes particularly impassioned when discussing the scale and significance of true drama.
‘Real life is really interesting! Drama is amazing, but drama built around real life has these wonky bits in it that often are more interesting, more compelling.
‘Completely fictional drama has people act in a way, or characters are written in a way, that is sort of smooth but sometimes unrealistic.’
‘Disingenuous,’ interjects Piper.
Martin continues: ‘So some of the great things about factual drama is that people behave in odd ways, people sort of…’
People sometimes think things have gone well when they haven’t, I can’t resist interjecting as Martin searches for the end of his thought and then laughs.
‘Exactly,’ he agrees, of Andrew and his personal secretary Amanda Thirsk’s (played by Keeley Hawes) reported view that the Newsnight interview had gone extremely well from their end.
‘People are incredible in all of their complexity and all their different ways. And that’s one of the lovely things about factual drama, it kind of reflects that.’
Before we part ways, I’d like to address the possibility that Scoop is focusing attention on Andrew’s tragedy at the price of informing the public of the disgusting acts of his old buddy and convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein.
Martin calls Epstein’s tale ‘great journalism in America’, and it has also been covered by documentaries.
Scoop also gives viewers a taste of it by following photographer Jae Donnelly (played by Sex Education’s Connor Swindells) as he captures the infamous photo of Andrew with Epstein in Central Park in 2010, proving their connection two years after the American financier pleaded guilty to child sex charges and served time in prison.
But Martin is firm on what Scoop’s ‘territory’ is.
‘You know, it’s a 90-minute film – you need to be clear about what you’re making your film about. And it felt that that’s what we were doing, we were telling the story of how the interview came to be, and why the interview came to be, and what impact it had on all of the characters in the story.
‘We do touch on all of the stuff in New York, but it feels that that’s not the focus of the film.’
Crucially, he adds, if you were making a film about Epstein then ‘you would do it in an entirely different way’.
‘So, it felt like it was the wrong thing to sort of dig into it and not to do it well.
‘We thought a lot about it, and just balancing the tone, which I think is also at the heart of your question – it’s that it’s a serious subject, but it’s also, in some ways, a surreal subject, a comic subject, and trying to balance both sides of the story and find a way through it, was very important to all of us.’
Scoop streams exclusively on Netflix from Friday, April 5.
