Producer Sam McAlister Reveals Why Prince Andrew Thought the BBC Newsnight Interview "Had Gone Brilliantly"

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When watching the Netflix film Scoop, which dramatizes how BBC Newsnight producer Sam McAlister secured the program's now infamous interview with Prince Andrew, one key question comes to mind: why did the royal initially think the disastrous sit-down with journalist Emily Maitlis was a success?

The movie—itself an adaptation of McAlister's 2022 book, Scoops—recreates the conversation with precision, and then shows Prince Andrew (played by Rufus Sewell) saying to Maitlis (Gillian Anderson), "You know, I thought that all went very well," as he walks her through Buckingham Palace. She responds dryly, and of course with a dual meaning, "Like a walk in the park."

While that specific back and forth may have been fictionalized, it is true that Prince Andrew was so pleased with the interview he asked Maitlis to stay for a tour.

"Prince Andrew is in a really invidious position because effectively what he's been told all his life is that he's amazing, he's brilliant. He's never had to pay for anything. He's never had a job interview. He's never had a 360—you know, he's not been knocked back in life. So he has an extraordinary capacity for misunderstanding his own capabilities. I call it 'royal delusion,' but it's something you see in major companies with CEOs, with bosses. It's not just Prince Andrew, but his was the most extreme example because to get to the end of that interview and think it had gone well, not only did he think it had gone well from the beam on his face, he clearly thought it had gone brilliantly," the real-life McAlister, who also served as a producer on Scoop, tells Town & Country.

"He offered a tour of the Palace, which Emily went on, and those iconic pictures that were captured by Mark Harrison, the photographer on the day, and we recreated in the film, were taken after that interview happened. So you can zoom in on his face and see how delighted he looks and zoom in on Emily's face and see how concerned she looks. So he genuinely seemed thrilled by his performance, and I have no idea how long his perception of having done well lasted, but it can't have been for too many days."

Indeed, just a few days after the interview aired, Prince Andrew announced he was stepping back from his royal duties "for the foreseeable future" in response to enormous public backlash to his appearance on Newsnight. Several years later, he has yet to return to the position of working royal, and it's hard to imagine he ever will.

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