Scoop: What is fact and what is fiction in Netflix’s Prince Andrew Newsnight film?
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 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 . Then there’s the face of , a coiffed, low-voiced Gillian Anderson as presenter , alongside a prosthetic-covered as Andrew and a wide-eyed as his then private secretary, Amanda Thirsk.
