The very public catalyst that led to Prince Andrew’s dramatic fall from grace is heading to Netflix.
The streamer has acquired Scoop, a function movie based mostly on the story behind the disgraced royal’s look on the BBC’s flagship information present Newsnight in 2019 — an hour of tv that grew to become some of the vital, infamous and ridiculed interviews lately (and one which was then used towards Andrew within the civil case filed by his sexual assault accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre).
Now in manufacturing, the movie — which was first introduced final 12 months — will star Rufus Sewell The Diplomat, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel) as Andrew and Gillian Anderson (Intercourse Schooling, The Crown) as Emily Maitlis, Newsnight’s former lead presenter who interviewed the prince. In the meantime, Keeley Hawes (Bodyguard, It’s a Sin) will play Amanda Thirsk, Andrew’s former personal secretary, and Billie Piper (I Hate Suzie, Collateral) will star as Sam McAlister, who negotiated and secured the bombshell reserving.
Primarily based on McAlister’s personal memoir, Scoops: Behind The Scenes of the BBC’s Most Surprising Interviews, the movie will inform the within story of the ladies that broke via the Buckingham Palace institution to land the inside track of the last decade, beginning with the primary failed strategy, via to the negotiations with Prince Andrew and his staff, the rehearsals, the interview itself and the well-documented and humiliating aftermath, which was famously described as, “a airplane crashing into an oil tanker, inflicting a tsunami, triggering a nuclear explosion.”
Emmy and BAFTA winner Philip Martin (The Crown, Prime Suspect, Wallander, Mo) directs the venture, with Hilary Salmon and Radford Neville (Luther, The Night time Of, MotherFatherSon) producing for The Lighthouse Movie & Tv alongside Sanjay Singhal (Bin Laden: The Highway to 9/11, Hassle at Topshop) for Voltage TV.
“It’s past my wildest desires, particularly as a primary time author, to finish up working with this extraordinary solid, Netflix, and the superb groups at The Lighthouse and Voltage,” mentioned McAlister. “Watching Billie Piper, certainly one of my favorite actresses, play ‘me’ will probably be a pinch myself second and I’m actually thrilled to be concerned on this movie.”
Through the interview, which targeted on Andrew’s relationship with late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and allegations of sexual assault of Giuffre by the royal when she was a minor, he infamously claimed that he had remained associates with Epstein, even after he had been launched from jail, as a result of he was “too honorable,” and mentioned that he couldn’t have been clubbing with Giuffre on a selected evening as a result of he was at a department of the restaurant chain Pizza Specific along with his youngsters. He additionally asserted that claims he was “sweating profusely” on the evening in query couldn’t be true due to a “peculiar medical situation” on the time that prevented him from sweating.
In early 2022, Andrew settled the sexual assault case with Giuffre out-of-court for a sum reported on the time as being £12 million ($14.4 million). The British press later reported that Queen Elizabeth II would help Andrew with the fee of the settlement.
