The Royal Family Scandal That Inspired Netflix's New Film 'Scoop'

Between Kate Middleton’s cancer diagnosis announcement and whatever Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been doing on their never-ending press tour, there has been no shortage of recent news coverage about England’s Royal Family. But if you still find yourself itching to revisit one of the biggest moments in royal history, then look no further than the new Netflix film Scoop.

Directed by the Emmy and BAFTA-winning Phillip Martin, Scoop takes audiences behind the curtain to tell the true inside-baseball story of how Prince Andrew’s landmark interview on BBC’s Newsnight came to be. Years later, the interview — the same one that exposed the Prince’s ties to disgraced financier and convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein; the same one that pushed the Prince to step back from his royal duties so he could get out of the spotlight — is still making ripples in England’s sacred bloodline. Scoop, for its part, provides a detailed account of its complex origins. As is said in a trailer for the film, “An hour of television can change everything.”

Just a year after going into production, Scoop is available to stream on Netflix on April 5, 2024.

The True Story Behind 'Scoop'

Based on true events, Scoop tells the jaw-dropping story about one of the most talked-about televised interviews in recent memory: Prince Andrew on BBC’s Newsnight. But rather than simply re-staging the interview, Scoop dives into the how of it all, investigating everything that goes into booking someone as high-profile as an actual Prince in the first place. From BBC’s private battle to bolster ratings to its heated negotiations with Buckingham Palace, Scoop acknowledges that “the interview is so significant,” but also that “it’s only 5% of the story.”

Largely inspired by findings in Scoops: Behind the Scenes of the Most Shocking Interviews, a book written by Newsnight’s former interview booker Sam McAlister, the new film is centered on McAlister (Billie Piper), as well as her female colleagues, Emily Maitlis (Gillian Anderson) and Esme Wren (Romola Garai). According to a press release, Scoop “highlights the women who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to bring one of the biggest news stories of the decade to light.”

In an interview with Netflix, director Philip Martin said, “I want to put the audience inside the breathtaking sequence of events that led to the interview…to tell a story about a search for answers, in a world of speculation and varying recollections.”

According to the director, Scoop is ultimately about “power, privilege, and differing perspectives, and how — whether in glittering palaces or high-tech newsrooms — we judge what’s true.”

The 'Scoop' Cast

The cast for Scoop is led by I Hate Suzie star Billie Piper in the role of Sam McAlister. Described as “an eccentric member of the BBC’s Newsnight team, but an invaluable one,” Sam is credited for being the one to actually book Prince Andrew, thanks to the effort she regularly puts into cultivating relationships with essential power-players outside the BBC. Speaking with Netflix, the real-life McAlister praised Piper’s portrayal of her, describing it as “so meta and surreal.”

Gillian Anderson, the star of Netflix’s own Sex Education, plays the “tough but never sensational” Emily Maitlis, the BBC journalist who sits down with Prince Andrew for that bombshell interview. “These women exist in real life…in a field that has been traditionally male-dominated,” the X-Files actress has said of her character. “What I love about this film is that all of the women sit prominently in the story; you see them all working together to bring this interview to light.”

Rufus Sewell, meanwhile, stars as Prince Andrew. Though the actor claims that he doesn’t “have that natural gift as a mimic that some people have,” he also “spent hours and hours just obsessing on this interview and what I thought was going on behind each measure, each movement, each counter-movement.”

The Scoop cast is rounded out by two other female power-players. Bodyguard’s Keeley Hawes plays Amanda Thirsk, Prince Andrew’s top aide and long-time private secretary, whose job responsibilities instantly get tougher once the prince finds himself in the middle of a huge cultural scandal. Joining her is Atonement’s Romola Gara, who plays Esme Wren, an editor for Newsnight who works tirelessly to make sure every detail for the interview is perfect.

Aside from giving viewers an unprecedented inside look into the breaking of one of this decade’s most talked-about news stories, the entire cast and crew of Scoop hope that the film sheds some essential light on the hard work that goes into creating culture-shifting journalism. “I hope that people walk away with some gratitude for that type of journalism. It feels like a dying thing now,” McAlister has said. “There are real crucial moments in the history of journalism that remind you of the difference that these kinds of interviews can make. Journalism at its best does something quite profoundly extraordinary that nothing else can do, and this movie is in honor of that.”

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