When Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth II’s second son, agreed to be interviewed on the BBC in November 2019, he possible didn’t anticipate it could sooner or later encourage a function movie. But “Scoop,” which involves Netflix on Friday, follows a TV musical and a documentary in depicting the 58-minute interview and its fallout. (Amazon can also be producing an upcoming restricted sequence.)
In the explosive dialog, Prince Andrew mentioned his friendship with the financier and convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein, and denied allegations that he had intercourse with a 17-year-old woman. Viewers have been appalled by his feedback, and British and worldwide information media characterised the looks as a PR catastrophe. In the next days, Prince Andrew introduced he would step again from public life.
Though the interview was performed by the journalist Emily Maitlis, “Scoop” emphasizes the work of Sam McAlister, the producer who secured it. The Netflix movie is predicated on McAlister’s memoir, “Scoops: Behind the Scenes of the BBC’s Most Shocking Interviews,” which was printed in 2022.
Here’s what else to know in regards to the interview and its fallout.
Why did the interview happen?
When Maitlis requested Prince Andrew on-camera why it was the appropriate time to “speak out” and provides a uncommon public interview, he replied: “Because there is no good time to talk about Mr. Epstein and all things associated.”
By November 2019, Prince Andrew was broadly acknowledged as one in every of Epstein’s pals, with whom he was identified to have vacationed and partied. In a 2015 civil case, Virginia Roberts Giuffre accused Epstein of forcing her to have sexual relations with Prince Andrew when she was 17. Buckingham Palace denied the accusation.
McAlister had been speaking to Prince Andrew’s workforce in regards to the prince showing on “Newsnight,” an essential BBC information program, for greater than a yr. In October 2018, Prince Andrew’s workforce advised to McAlister that he may talk about his networking scheme for entrepreneurs, Pitch@Palace, on the present. She declined, later saying that “a puff piece” wasn’t the type of story “Newsnight” would run.
According to McAllister, she met in May 2019 with, Amanda Thirsk, Prince Andrew’s non-public secretary on the time, to debate a extra substantial interview. Thirsk had one situation: There may very well be no questions on Epstein.
But in August 2019, Epstein died by suicide in jail whereas awaiting a sex-trafficking trial, and McAlister and Thirsk started discussing the necessity for Prince Andrew to elucidate the friendship.
What is ‘Newsnight’?
“Newsnight” has been working on the BBC since 1980, and incorporates investigative reporting with studio discussions about information and present affairs.
Its finest identified presenter is Jeremy Paxman, who hosted the present from 1989-2014, and was identified for his combative interview fashion. Maitlis turned the present’s lead presenter in 2019.
In 2023, the BBC introduced that Newsnight would lose its devoted reporting workforce, and the present would turn out to be “a debate, discussion and interview program.” On social media, Maitlis wrote: “Could the Prince Andrew interview have happened in this iteration of ‘Newsnight?’ Of course not.”
Who are Sam McAlister and Emily Maitlis?
McAlister labored as a legal lawyer earlier than spending 10 years as an interview producer and visitor booker for “Newsnight.” She took a buyout from the BBC in 2021.
In her memoir, printed the next yr, she wrote that her energy was “persuading reluctant people to do things.” She is an government producer of “Scoop.”
Maitlis is a journalist and broadcaster who joined the BBC in 2001, and have become one of many company’s most well-known faces — and one in every of its highest paid too, based on a BBC report. She left in 2022, and at present co-hosts the present affairs podcast “The News Agents.”
Maitlis can also be an government producer on an upcoming three-part sequence dramatizing the Prince Andrew interview for Amazon Studios. Called “A Very Royal Scandal,” it stars Ruth Wilson as Maitlis, Michael Sheen as Prince Andrew and Joanna Scanlan as Thirsk.
Why was the interview so explosive?
Instead of distancing himself from Epstein within the interview, Prince Andrew mentioned he didn’t remorse their friendship as a result of it led to “opportunities” that have been “actually very useful.”
In December 2010, after Epstein had served time for soliciting a minor for prostitution, he was photographed in Central Park with Prince Andrew, who admitted he had stayed at Epstein’s Upper East Side mansion for a number of days as a result of “it was a convenient place to stay.” When Maitlis requested in regards to the many underage ladies photographed leaving the home, Prince Andrew mentioned: “As far as I was aware, they were staff.”
Then Maitlis introduced up {a photograph} of Prince Andrew along with his arm across the waist of Guiffre, the girl who accused him. The prince replied, “That’s me, but whether that’s my hand … I have simply no recollection of the photograph ever being taken.”
The alibis he supplied when requested about Giuffre’s claims have been mocked by the press and viewers. He couldn’t have sweated profusely whereas dancing with Guiffre at a London nightclub as she claimed, he mentioned, as a result of on that day, he had taken his daughter, Princess Beatrice, to a pizza restaurant. He additionally “didn’t sweat at the time” due to a “peculiar medical condition,” he added.
What was the fallout?
For days after, Prince Andrew turned a nationwide determine of enjoyable in Britain, however there was a severe facet to the response, too. Lisa Bloom, a lawyer who represented 5 of Epstein’s victims, described Prince Andrew as “utterly lacking in compassion.”
Soon, Prince Andrew introduced he was stepping again from his public duties as a member of the royal household.
In August 2021, Giuffre filed a lawsuit in opposition to Prince Andrew, accusing him of rape. In January 2022, unsealed courtroom paperwork revealed that the prince had paid Guiffre a settlement of $500,000 in 2009.
He was subsequently stripped of his navy titles and the appropriate to be known as “His Royal Highness.” In February 2022, the lawsuit was settled, with Prince Andrew paying Guiffre an undisclosed quantity and agreeing to make “a substantial donation” to a charity “in support of victims’ rights.”
