SCOOP [Netflix]

I’ll watch anything with Gillian Anderson in it. This Netflix film is a docudrama about the BBC’s  Newsnight  team scoring a sensationally revealing 2019 interview with Prince Andrew, Duke of York (Rufus Sewell), about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein…and underaged girls.



The events that led up to the unusual royal interview conducted by  Newsnight  anchor Emily Maitlis ( Gillian Anderson ) are seen through the actions of show booker, Sam McAlister (Billy Piper), who manages to convince Prince Andrew (aka, “Randy Andy) that an interview broadcast nationally might better his position (MINOR SPOILER: it doesn’t). The film doesn’t mention that the real McAlister was originally a barrister, perhaps because that might have muddied the way she is presented as a brassy, working-class, struggling single mother. Before the interview with Prince Andrew, Emily Maitlis asks Sam McAlister for advice and Sam tells her, “Let him talk. Men like that.” A wise bit of advice from a lawyer skilled in cross-examination.



My favorite part of Scoop isn’t the interview, which I saw back in 2019, but Sam McAlister persuading Prince Andrew’s aide Amanda Thirsk (Keeley Hawes) to consider giving  Newsnight  an exclusive interview with no “red lines,” in other words, no areas that can’t be discussed. You have to wonder what the Royals and their staff of advisors was thinking when they agreed to this fiasco.



“When Epstein is re-arrested in 2019 and the royal connection starts getting aired all over again, especially the infamous photograph of Andrew, a then-17-year-old trafficking victim named Virginia Giuffre and Maxwell upstairs at Maxwell’s London flat, Andrew and his aides believe this might be an opportunity to spin the story in his favor. All are convinced that the supposed charm of the ‘Queen’s favorite’ will somehow work its magic even on famously tough interviewer Maitlis.” There was no magic as millions of the Queen’s subjects watched Prince Andrew evade and lie during the hour broadcast. It’s hard to spin Pedophilia. GRADE: B+