The fifth season of Netflix’s The Crown dedicated an entire episode to Princess Diana’s shocking Panorama interview—an almost-hour-long extravaganza in which the then Princess of Wales opened up about the difficulties in her marriage and her struggles with her mental health to the now disgraced Martin Bashir. More than two decades later, it remains the most jaw-dropping royal interview ever to be broadcast on the BBC, but there is a close second: Prince Andrew’s startling conversation with Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis in 2019, which saw the Duke of York discuss his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. It should come as no surprise, then, that the streaming giant is now turning its lens on the latter with an explosive new feature film.
On February 7, 2023, it was confirmed that Philip Martin—whose previous directing credits include some of the most tense episodes from The Crown’s first season—would be helming Scoop, the gripping true story of how the infamous interview was secured. Its log line describes it as an “insider account of the inner workings of the palace and the BBC, twin bastions of the British establishment,” which will show how a female-led team landed “the scoop of the decade that led to [a] catastrophic fall from grace.” It promises to cover the entire saga, from showing the journalists “navigating palace vetoes, to breaking through to Prince Andrew’s inner circle, the high stakes negotiations, [the] intensity of rehearsals [and] the interview itself.”
The release, which will land on screens on April 5, is based on the former Newsnight producer Sam McAlister’s memoir, Scoops: Behind the Scenes of the BBC’s Most Shocking Interviews. The BAFTA-nominated McAlister, a trained criminal barrister who negotiated many of the broadcaster’s biggest exclusives and was responsible for booking Prince Andrew, will be played by Billie Piper. Meanwhile another The Crown alumnus, Gillian Anderson, will take on the part of Newsnight’s former lead presenter Emily Maitlis, alongside Rufus Sewell as Prince Andrew and Keeley Hawes as Amanda Thirsk, the Duke’s private secretary at the time.
Further additions to the cast were revealed on March 14: Atonement and Emma’s Romola Garai as Newsnight editor Esme Wren; Lia Williams (The Crown’s Wallis Simpson) as Fran Unsworth, the BBC’s director of news and current affairs; Sex Education’s Connor Swindells as photographer Jae Donnelly, who captured the infamous image of Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein in Central Park; and The Great’s Charity Wakefield as Princess Beatrice.
On February 5, 2024, the first stills dropped, followed by the first teaser on February 12, and the official trailer on March 18. They’ve caused quite the stir, to say the least. Gillian Anderson seems to have nailed Emily Maitlis’s bob, voice, and expression of polite bafflement, but it’s Rufus Sewell, utterly unrecognizable as Prince Andrew, who has set expectations sky high.
It’s not the only reimagining of this slice of recent history to be heading to the small screen, either. In August 2022, it was reported that Maitlis herself had partnered with Blueprint Pictures, the production company behind A Very English Scandal and A Very British Scandal, to create A Very Royal Scandal, a three-part miniseries about the interview and its aftermath in which she’d be played by Ruth Wilson opposite Michael Sheen’s Prince Andrew. Let’s hope that, too, arrives soon enough.
