Scoop (2024) Review!!!

Synopsis – How the BBC obtained the bombshell interview with Prince Andrew about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

My Take – The statement, “An hour of television can change everything”, certainly rings true of the infamous 2019 episode of BBC Newsnight. An hour-long interview in which anchor Emily Maitlis interviewed Prince Andrew about his friendship with the Jeffrey Epstein.

The landmark moment in television news in which the Queen’s second son addressed his friendship with the late convicted pedophile and human sex trafficker, something that roundly convicted him in the court of public opinion, and led to him being stripped of his royal duties and titles.

Though the story was told meticulously in the Amazon miniseries, A Very Royal Scandal, starring Ruth Wilson and Michael Sheen, and counts Maitlis as an executive producer.

This slick Netflix dramatization, from director Philip Martin (The Forger) and screenwriter Peter Moffat, isn’t especially interested in the fallout, or indeed in the Prince’s experience at all, but instead takes a different approach by tracing the media machinations and negotiations that enabled the interview in the first place, and pointedly centering the newswomen, on screen and off, who made it all happen, especially booker Sam McAlister, who negotiated and secured the interview.

Adapted from McAlister‘s 2022 memoir Scoops: Behind the Scenes of the BBC’s Most Shocking Interviews, the film manages to give an energetic exploration of its subject in the form of a taut, punchy, behind-the-scenes drama that does an interesting job of unpicking the gripping piece of underdog story.

Sure, one can argue what the point is considering the story is so recent and one can easily watch the original interview online, however, the absurdity and horror of the verbal exchange manages to startle once more and the top-notch performances of the three main leads keep us thoroughly engaged.

Set mostly in 2019, the story mainly follows Sam McAlister (Billie Piper), a producer and booker for the BBC’s news program, Newsnight. A single mother with proudly working-class roots, McAlister is briskly good at her job, netting A-list talent galore, but her liberal colleagues chafe against what they perceive as her tabloid approach to news journalism, with the well-spoken, conscientious Emily Maitlis (Gillian Anderson) embodying old-school BBC values.

Frustrated and on the brink of either quitting or getting fired, McAlister ends up dropping an instinctive message to both Jae Donnelly (Connor Swindells), a New York-based paparazzo, who the clicked the 2010 snap of Prince Andrew (Rufus Sewell) in conversation with the post-release sex offender Jeffrey Epstein while walking through Central Park, and Amanda Thirsk (Keeley Hawes), the Prince’s private secretary, for interview access.

Though Thirsk initially plays coy and Newsnight producer Esmé Wren (Romola Garai) isn’t entirely sure they have a story yet. But when Epstein is arrested by the FBI for sex trafficking, both women begin taking her a lot more seriously, particularly after he is found dead in jail cell.

Allowing McAlister to enter careful negotiations to secure the ultimate exclusive: an hour-long interview between presenter Emily Maitlis and Prince Andrew, in order for him to set the record straight on his relationship with the disgraced financier.

The film is essentially one hour of McAlister working to get the Prince Andrew interview and half an hour of the interview itself. But the film’s fast-paced direction by Philip Martin keeps the story engaging and energetic throughout.

It’s an instructive shift in perspective, making this a story of a scrappy underdog fighting two mighty British institutions, not just the House of Windsor, in all its impenetrably protected prestige, but the BBC itself, initially presented here as a staid, even classist organization, hostile to intrepid outsiders.

The best scenes in the film come during the extensive preparation before the big day. Each side, the palace and the BBC, war-games the interview, trying to anticipate the other, director Martin cannily cross-cutting between the two separate bunkers.

The interview itself, with all of its bonkers, now-infamous moments, forms the grand center piece of the film, and it certainly captures the surrealism behind it all, producers gawping in disbelief at the sidelines while the royal household seems cheerfully happy about it all.

We see how McAlister and the BBC people, realize how off the rails Andrew is going, and react to handling the memory cards containing the interview like they’ve been given the Holy Grail. They understand how sensational the interview is, which just makes you wonder how insular and out of touch people who work at the palace really are.

And while the film seems comfortable to play the more ridiculous moments for laughs, it struggles to impart the seriousness of Epstein’s crimes, or the things Andrew has been accused of. Even Virginia Giuffre, the woman who would sue Andrew for sexual assault (the case was eventually settled out of court), is merely a name mentioned in passing conversation.

Performances wise, Gillian Anderson once again serves an uncannily accurate portrayal, while Rufus Sewell is undeniably superb and unrecognizable under prosthetics. Billie Piper is incredibly effective as the driven McAlister, wonderfully capturing the various layers brewing underneath the surface, including her refusal to take no for an answer or compromise in her values.

Keeley Hawes is sincere, making us think that she really believes that Andrew had done no wrong. In other roles, Romola Garai, Connor Swindells, Charity Wakefield and Paul Popplewell. On the whole, ‘Scoop’ is an effective dramatization of the infamous interview that is both immaculately recreated and performed.