Stranger than fiction?

There are moments in 'Scoop', the new film about Andrew's disastrous 'Newsnight' interview, that almost seem too wild to be accurate. Ellie Harrison gets to the truth of the matter

- 

By now, we are all familiar with the grim, absurd details of Prince Andrew’s 2019 Newsnight interview. Yes, he claimed he couldn’t have had sex with 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre because he was at a Pizza Express in Woking. Yes, he insisted he was physically unable to sweat after an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands war. And yes, he said he had visited convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in New York because he hadn’t wanted to take the “chicken’s way out” and dump his old friend over the phone.

But what the new Netflix film Scoop shows us, for the first time on screen, is the nail-biting behind-the-scenes operation to get the story. It shows us how the BBC convinced Andrew to agree to an interview so disastrous that it resulted in the duke stepping back from royal duties and eventually being stripped of his military titles and patronages.

The movie is based on the memoir of former Newsnight booker Sam McAlister, who negotiated and secured the interview. McAlister – with her distinctive dress sense (big gold hoops, leopard-print boots) – is portrayed in the film by Billie Piper. Then there’s the face of Newsnight, a coiffed, low-voiced Gillian Anderson as presenter Emily Maitlis, alongside a prostheticcovered Rufus Sewell as Andrew and a wide-eyed Keeley Hawes as his then private secretary, Amanda Thirsk.

Whether it’s the insight that Scoop offers into Maitlis’s psyche, or the subplot about the dogged British photographer who captured Epstein and Andrew’s walk in the park, the film gives a new perspective on one of the most famous interviews of the century. But some moments in