The full trailer for Netflix drama Scoop was unveiled on Monday, which dramatises the notorious interview between Prince Andrew and Emily Maitlis.
In the clip Rufus Sewell was seen embodying the shamed Duke Of York as he met with the BBC journalist, played by Gillian Anderson.
Yet a standout moment in the trailer came from Billie Piper, who portrays Sam McAlister, the Newsnight producer who secured the 2019 interview.
Attempting to woo the prince into speaking with the BBC about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Sam probes: ‘With respect, you know how people see you.’
As the late queen’s third child looks on blankly, he muses: ‘Spell it out’, prompting Sam to blurt out ‘Randy Andy…’
The first full trailer for Netflix drama Scoop was unveiled on Monday, which dramatises the notorious interview between Prince Andrew and Emily Maitlis (portrayed by Rufus Sewell and Emily Maitlis)
In the clip Rufus Sewell was seen embodying the shamed Duke Of York as he met with the BBC journalist, played by Gillian Anderson
After an excruciatingly awkward silence, the prince smirks: ‘With respect?’
The trailer begins with Sam announcing: ‘An hour of television can change everything’, before cutting to a montage of Emily presenting the news and the headlines about Prince Andrew’s friendship with Epstein.
With the BBC under pressure to secure an interview with the royal, Sam is seen working her charm on Prince Andrew’s private secretary Amanda Thirsk, played by Keeley Hawes.
While Amanda warns there is a ‘red line’ when it comes to securing the interview, the scene cuts to Emily huddled in the back of a car on her way to meet the royal as she quips: ‘I’ve never been smuggled into a palace before.’
The BBC team then have their first meeting with the prince, and that awkward exchange between Sam and ‘randy Andy’ before she piles on the pressure by reasoning: ‘You can’t stay silent.’
Pressure is then on for Sam and Emily to ensure everything goes to plan, with Esme Wren, the editor of Newsnight (played by Romola Garai) warning: ‘Make no mistake, if we don’t get the tone right, the story won’t be him. It’ll be us.’
It then cuts to Emily sitting down with the prince in a set up she dubs ‘like a Western’ while the royal walks away admitting: ‘I thought that all went very well.’
The trailer ends with the world’s media latching onto the car crash interview and the prince visibly under pressure as the news cycle spirals out of his control.
A standout moment in the trailer came from Billie Piper, who portrays Sam McAlister, the Newsnight producer who secured the notorious 2019 interview as she tells the Prince he’s known as ‘Randy Andy’
With the BBC under pressure to secure an interview with the royal, Sam is seen working her charm on Prince Andrew’s private secretary Amanda Thirsk, played by Keeley Hawes
While Amanda warns there is a ‘red line’ when it comes to securing the interview, the scene cuts to Emily huddled in the back of a car on her way to meet the royal
The trailer ends with the world’s media latching onto the car crash interview and the prince visibly under pressure as the news cycle spirals out of his control
Based on the book Scoops, by Sam McAlister, the film captures the tension behind booking the royal for the interview, as well as the tension among the cast during the interview.
In the infamous interview, Emily discussed Virginia Giuffre‘s claims that she was forced to have sex with Andrew three times when she was 17 under the orders of Epstein.
The prince strongly denied the claims throughout the interview.
The discussion, in which Andrew made a series of claims – including insisting he couldn’t have been with Virginia at the time of the alleged encounter because he was dining at a Pizza Express in Woking and that a medical condition left him unable to sweat – has since gained notoriety and is widely acknowledged to have embarrassed the royals.
The interview was described as a ‘car crash’ and on November 20, 2019, a statement from Buckingham Palace said Prince Andrew was suspended from public duties ‘for the foreseeable future’.
In May 2020, it was announced that the prince was permanently stepping down from his public roles.
In January 2022, Virginia was given the go-ahead to sue Andrew for unspecified damages in a New York civil court.
Despite vowing to fight the claims and repeatedly protesting his innocence, the prince agreed to pay a huge sum to settle the case before it ever reached a jury. interview, then the film.
Netflilx describes the production as portraying: ‘The inside track of the women that broke through the Buckingham Palace establishment to secure the scoop of the decade that led to the catastrophic fall from grace of The Queen’s ‘Favourite son’.
‘From navigating Palace vetoes, to breaking through to Prince Andrew’s inner circle, the high stakes negotiations and intensity of rehearsal – to the jaw dropping interview itself.
‘SCOOP is the insider account of the inner workings of the Palace and the BBC, twin bastions of the British Establishment, spotlighting the journalists whose tenacity and guts broke through the highest of ceilings – and into the inner sanctum and calculations of a man with everything to lose.’
Rufus Sewell (left) plays The Duke Of York
Gillian Anderson (left) stars as Emily Maitlis
Billie Piper (left) plays the producer Sam McAlister
Keeley Hawes (left) stars as Prince Andrew’s former personal secretary Amanda Thirsk
What the dramatisation does not show, however, is the alleged tension between TV star Emily and producer Sam.
Sam was said to earn around a tenth of Emily’s £325,000 annual salary and while Emily would get taxis for work journeys, Sam forked out for buses from the BBC’s central London HQ to Buckingham Palace for meetings with Prince Andrew’s former private secretary.
The disparity is perhaps all the more galling for single mum Sam after Emily gave an in-depth interview to Radio Times in 2020 explaining how the story came about – not once mentioning McAlister.
In the piece – headlined ‘How we did it, Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis and Esme Wren on the Prince Andrew interview that shocked the world’, Wren, now editor of Channel 4 News, said: ‘We delivered a quite exceptional piece of journalism.
One former colleague said: ‘While those who work behind the scenes don’t always get credit, for Emily to go out there and not mention Sam in such a high-profile interview seems pretty unfair and wrong.
‘Emily was on a significant salary and then you had Sam grafting behind the scenes on about £30,000 a year. Without Sam there would have been no Prince Andrew interview. It’s as simple as that.’
As for how she felt overlooked, a source said: ‘Sam tried to laugh at it. It seemed deeply baffling that two women would not mention another, far more junior woman in an interview where they were talking about how the interview came about.’
But friends of Sam say the omission was a factor in her decision to leave the BBC in 2021 to go freelance and become a champion of behind-the-scenes production staff.
Emily, 53, has always refused to comment on the rift.
Now Emily is making her own show based on the interview, A Very Royal Scandal, currently in production for Netflix rival Amazon Prime.
With money no object for either streaming giant, they have been battling it out for the ultimate Hollywood cast for their adaptations.
Scoop boasts an A-list roster – according to friends McAlister is ‘over the moon’ to have secured the The Crown’s Anderson — while A Very Royal Scandal has Hollywood’s Michael Sheen as the Prince.
He recently said he doesn’t want his portrayal to be ‘hatchet job’: ‘Inevitably you want to bring humanity to the character.’
Based on the book Scoops, by Sam McAlister, the film captures the tension behind booking the royal for the interview (left: Rufus and Gillian, right: Emily and Prince Andrew)
Golden Globe winner Ruth Wilson will take the role of Maitlis and The Thick Of It’s Joanna Scanlan will play Thirsk in A Very Royal Scandal.
As for the scripts, Scoop boasts British playwright and screenwriter Peter Moffat with Philip Martin, who worked on seven episodes of The Crown in 2017, directing.
Emily has arguably gone one better for her three-part series, signing Bafta-nominated director Julian Jarrold, who headed up The Crown and worked on Sky Atlantic’s drama This England.
However, she faces a race against time to get her production ready before Netflix’s Scoop, which will be released on the streaming platform on April 5.
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