“An hour of television can change everything,” Billie Piper says in the trailer for Scoop, the film based on the true events leading up to Prince Andrew’s explosive 2019 BBC Newsnight interview. The eyes of Britain were on journalist Emily Maitlis (played here by Gillian Anderson) as she grilled the royal (Rufus Sewell) about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The fallout was immediate, as Prince Andrew announced that he was stepping back from his public duties in the days following the broadcast. Scoop, meanwhile, was just nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Television Movie.
But how did a son of the Queen of England find himself in the hot seat? In Scoop, directed by Emmy and BAFTA winner Philip Martin (The Crown), Piper plays Sam McAlister, the interview booker for the prestigious current affairs show who managed to secure what was thought to be an ungettable get. Based on McAlister’s own account and adapted by Peter Moffat and Geoff Bussetil, Scoop highlights the women who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to bring one of the biggest news stories of the decade to light. In the drama, McAlister, Maitlis, and editor Esme Wren (Romola Garai) track the story from beginning to end, navigating palace vetoes, tense negotiations with Prince Andrew’s private secretary Amanda Thirsk (Keeley Hawes), and hours of research and rehearsal leading up to the interview itself.
“The interview is so significant, but it’s 5% of the story,” McAlister tells Tudum. “What we do is we take you on the journey to how this all began.”
Think of this movie as your backstage pass to the inner workings of high-stakes broadcast news, as two British institutions — Buckingham Palace and the BBC — clash over the story of a lifetime. “I want to put the audience inside the breathtaking sequence of events that led to the interview with Prince Andrew — to tell a story about a search for answers, in a world of speculation and varying recollections,” Martin told Netflix. “It’s a film about power, privilege, and differing perspectives and how — whether in glittering palaces or high-tech newsrooms — we judge what’s true.”
For Piper, this was an opportunity to gain insight into a story that had long fascinated her on a personal level. “It was something I cared about tremendously,” she tells Tudum. “When you watch that interview, you think, ‘How did this get onto the screens? How was this signed off on? Who was part of this?’ Getting this close to a royal? That level of exposure — don’t know that I’ll ever see anything like it again. In my lifetime, I’ve never seen an interview like it. And there are a number of incredible women behind this moment, and telling their story is a gift as an actor, to be honest.”
McAlister is our guide into the world of the BBC, where her snakeskin stiletto boots and upfront tenacity mark her as a bit of an outsider. “I was a maverick in an organization that does have quite rigid ways of doing things,” McAlister says. A single mom from a working-class background, she feels like she has something to prove at a time when the journalism industry is in crisis. With the BBC facing ever-increasing competition, Newsnight’s continued existence is in question and the pressure to bolster ratings with audience-grabbing interview subjects is at an all-time high.
Piper latched onto those details as she crafted her performance, learning McAlister’s body language, voice intonations, and even her distinctive walk. “You don’t expect someone with that life-affirming warmth and steeliness combined,” Piper says.
“Billie really encapsulated that mix between seriousness and the lighter side of my character,” McAlister says. “To watch her literally transform, change her voice, [and wear] the extraordinary wig, my nails, the makeup, the roster of black clothing — it’s exactly the same. So meta and surreal.”
Yes, Scoop is based on what really happened when Prince Andrew was interviewed, and it uses Scoops: Behind the Scenes of the Most Shocking Interviews, McAlister’s insider account of her time booking talent for BBC’s prestigious Newsnight program, as its primary source. Additionally, the film’s producers meticulously researched the events at the BBC and Buckingham Palace during this time. There are some dramatized differences, of course. Unlike in the film, in reality, McAlister spent 13 months building a relationship with Thirsk, turning nos into maybes, and maybes into that final yes. “Imagine going on a hundred first dates and only getting one second date,” McAlister says. “That is effectively my job.”
Re-creating the interview was a surreal experience for McAlister, who was on set for both the real thing and the movie’s reenactment. “It was like being there all over again,” she says, pointing to the “brilliance” of Anderson’s and Sewell’s performances as Maitlis and Prince Andrew. “The level of detail, putting together exactly the same room, the camera angles, the lighting, the specifics of the table, the cables, the types of cameras, the carpet — everything is so ridiculously close.”
“It was weirdly moving,” Piper adds. “They were doing such a convincing job, and the whole thing felt like we’d geared towards this moment. It felt like, ‘OK, this is a job worth doing.’ ”
In her Chanel jacket, leopard-print heels and bleached-blonde hair, Sam is an eccentric member of the BBC’s Newsnight team, but an invaluable one. She’s particular about doing her job her own way, which makes her feel like a bit of an outsider. The talented booking agent spends most of her time cultivating relationships with people outside the office, and she’s a straight shooter whose warmth and kindness make her a master negotiator. Sam’s persistence helped her to land this exclusive interview with a member of the royal family.
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Emily is the BBC journalist who conducts the bombshell interview with Prince Andrew. She’s tough, but never sensational.
“These women exist in real life, and they are women in a field that has been traditionally male-dominated,” Anderson told Netflix. “Having a story about their experience and having journalists like Emily Maitlis represented in film is important. 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.”
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As Prince Andrew’s top aide and private secretary, Amanda works tirelessly to manage the scandal he finds himself at the center of. Amanda feels like she is part of the royal family because she’s been with them for so long, and does her best to look out for the prince — but she can only do so much.
“She was pivotal in the decision that Prince Andrew should do this interview with Newsnight,” Hawes told Netflix. “And so we meet her at a very early stage where she goes and agrees to have a meeting with Sam McAlister. The wheels start turning and Amanda Thirsk thinks that this could be a really good idea in terms of PR for Prince Andrew.”
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Newsnight editor Esme oversees the team of capable producers and researchers working around the clock to bring the interview together. Once she realizes how big the story has become, Esme is diligent about getting it right. From planning Emily’s interview outfit to asking the right questions, Esme knows what makes good TV.
“[Esme] has a complex bunch of people to work with, some of whom don’t get on with each other,” Martin told Netflix. “Romola is just fantastic at that. She brought a gravitas to it — you know that she needs this interview really badly, you know that it’ll turn things around for Newsnight, but she’s able to bring that all off amazingly.”
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Prince Andrew, the second son of Queen Elizabeth II, finds himself in the middle of a scandal and must prove his integrity to the British people in a sit-down interview with Newsnight.
“I don’t have that natural gift as a mimic that some people have, so I had a lot of work to do,” Sewell told Netflix about prepping for his performance. “I spent hours and hours just obsessing on this interview and what I thought was going on behind each measure, each movement, each counter movement.”
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Piper tells Tudum that she became emotional watching Anderson step into the shoes of respected newsreader Maitlis. “[It’s an incredible] responsibility that Gillian has, playing someone who is very much part of our British fabric. We know Emily Maitlis. We’ve seen her deliver really hard-hitting interviews. She is a big deal in our country, and she’s very public facing. But Gillian absolutely nailed it.”
By following a reporter and her colleagues in hot pursuit of a major story, the film fits into a long tradition of movies about journalists holding powerful institutions accountable. But its peers — films like All the President’s Men, Spotlight, The Post, Good Night, and Good Luck, and Frost/Nixon, to name just a few –– overwhelmingly center on men as the truth-tellers. As Anderson’s Maitlis elegantly sums up in the trailer: “Three women and a whippet. You wouldn’t have seen that in a BBC studio when I started.”
What makes Scoop stand out is its focus on the women behind the news. “It’s a really rare opportunity to see women in their 40s and 50s depicted in a professional setting, going about their jobs to the best of their abilities with an extraordinary outcome, McAlister says. “That’s what makes this content relatable, and also important and significant.”
“It was like a piece of theater, it was like a first act of a play, it was incredible to have that experience,” Anderson tells Krista Smith about recreating Maitlis’ interview with Prince Andrew. “That's what you want as an actor, right?” Listen to their full conversation on Skip Intro below.
“Newsnight is the pinnacle, the gold standard of BBC news journalism,” Martin told Netflix. “It’s a nightly news show and it’s where the toughest journalism takes place: It’s the most detailed investigations, the hardest interviews. It’s been going for about 40 years and if you work in news at the BBC, it’s where you want to end up.”
Scoop is now streaming on Netflix. Piper hopes that audiences will take note of the staggering amount of work and dedication that goes into producing the gold standard of news. “I hope that people walk away with some gratitude for that type of journalism. It feels like a dying thing now,” she says.
“There are real crucial moments in the history of journalism that remind you of the difference that these kinds of interviews can make,” McAlister adds. “Journalism at its best does something quite profoundly extraordinary that nothing else can do, and this movie is in honor of that.”
