Prince Andrew's Infamous BBC Interview to Be Adapted Into a Film

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The story of the BBC bombshell interview with Prince Andrew about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffery Epstein will be dramatized on film.

Here's everything we know about Scoop, the upcoming Netflix drama.

Rufus Sewell will play Prince Andrew.

Deadline first reported the news, sharing the film will be called Scoop and that Hugh Grant is one of the actors in the running to portray the disgraced Prince Andrew. Grant, however, soon tweeted, "No I'm not. Never heard of it." A few months later, Netflix announced: Rufus Sewell will star as the prince.

The rest of the cast is follows:

• Gillian Anderson will play interviewer Emily Maitlis

• Keely Hawes will play Amanda Thirsk, Andrew’s former private secretary

• Billie Piper will play Sam McAlister, who negotiated the interview

• Connor Swindells will play Jae Donnelly, the photographer who took a photo of Prince Andrew in Central Park with Epstein

• Charity Wakefield will play Andrew's daughter, Princess Beatrice

• Lia Williams will play Fran Unsworth, BBC's former director of news

• Amanda Redman will play Sam McAlister's mother

The film is based on Sam McAlister's Scoops book.

Peter Moffat is writing the screenplay. Moffat explained that Scoop is "about how the BBC’s Newsnight team got the scoop, then the actual filming of it," adding: "The other thing is, ‘why did he agree to do it?' How was it that he decided it was a good idea to do a great big long interview with Emily Maitlis on the BBC?"

McAlister's Scoops: Behind the Scenes of the BBC’s Most Shocking Interviews came out this past fall. In the book, McAlister details how the BBC secured the 2019 interview with Prince Andrew. (Read an excerpt from Scoops here, including how Princess Beatrice was present for the negotiations.)

"Sam and those two extraordinary women, Emily [Maitlis] and Esme [Wren, former Newsnight editor], made the interview happen under real stress and pressure because once it was agreed it happened in secret. Almost nobody inside the BBC could know about it for fear it would leak," Moffat explained. "What Andrew was going to say was going to be extremely relevant in court later… a real responsibility, particularly to Epstein’s women victims. It was our one shot at looking at what Andrew had to say about Epstein. The seriousness with which Emily, Esme and Sam were taking it, of course, was right."

What actually happened during the Newsnight interview?

During the nearly 50-minute interview filmed at Buckingham Palace, Prince Andrew spoke about his association with Epstein. He shared how he first met Epstein—through Ghislaine Maxwell)—and denied allegations that he had sex with one of Epstein's alleged victims, Virginia Giuffre.

The backlash to the interview was immediate, and Prince Andrew stepped back from public duties. "I have asked Her Majesty if I may step back from public duties for the foreseeable future, and she has given her permission," he said in a statement released on November 20, 2019. In January 2022, Prince Andrew's military affiliations and royal patronages were returned to the Queen.

Though he was part of the mourning events surrounding the death of Queen Elizabeth, Prince Andrew has not appeared with the royal family since.

No premiere date has been set yet.

The film will premiere on Netflix, and is currently in production. No premiere date has been set yet.

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