It’s the one positive review Netflix likely does not want. Prince Andrew’s friends tell The Daily Beast he is “delighted” with his portrayal (by Rufus Sewell) in the streamer’s latest buzzy drama Scoop, which dramatizes the 2019 BBC Newsnight interview that crystallized Andrew’s disgrace and precipitated his withdrawal from public life.
The interview, conducted by anchor Emily Maitlis (Gillian Anderson), famously included Andrew’s denial of sweating, and of ever having met Virginia Roberts Giuffre, and his using a pizza night with his daughters as an alibi. Giuffre alleged Andrew had sexually assaulted her three times when she was a minor and being trafficked by Andrew’s former friend, Jeffrey Epstein—a claim Andrew has always denied. He later paid Giuffre a rumored $12m in an out-of-court settlement.
Based on the book, Scoops, by former Newsnight talent booker Sam McAlister (Billie Piper), Scoop tells the trajectory of events leading to the interview being recorded in Buckingham Palace from McAlister’s point of view—and with her talents and persistence as central to securing the sit-down. Andrew is portrayed as a vain buffoon, rather than villainous, alleged abuser.
A friend of Andrew’s who has spoken to the prince since the one-off film was released told The Daily Beast: “Obviously Andrew regrets doing the interview, and if he had his time again he wouldn’t do it. That said, he feels Scoop is much more even-handed than he expected. It’s fair to say he was delighted by Rufus Sewell’s portrayal of him.”
Another friend of the duke’s told The Daily Beast: “I think the show, to the satisfaction of everyone who actually knows the guy, made clear that Andrew was an extremely good convener of people. He did actually play a valuable role for the royals with Pitch@Palace and his other business-focused advocacy work. When he was at a business meet and greet in a conference room in Hong Kong, there was real energy when he entered the room. Those things are otherwise as dull as ditch water. He flew the flag for British business. He knows he screwed up monumentally over Epstein—but nobody is now doing what he did then. He still has a lot to offer.”
The friend added: “The irony of course is that Newsnight got gutted anyway [the nightly show was cut to 30 minutes, and more than half of its 60 staff were fired], and Andrew is very much back in the fold.”
A friend of the king and queen said that Charles, who is battling cancer, was “vanishingly unlikely” to have watched the show and that he regarded the “Andrew question” as “settled,” and that there was no way back to an official, public role for Andrew but that he would continue to be welcomed at non-state, family occasions. Buckingham Palace did not respond to a request for comment on the drama, including whether the king had watched it.
Scoop is one of two TV dramas focusing on the notorious Newsnight interview; in a few months time, A Very Royal Scandal—executive-produced by Maitlis—will debut on Amazon Prime Video, and it is unknown whether McAlister will be portrayed as central to the whole enterprise as Scoops showed her. Ruth Wilson will play Maitlis, and Michael Sheen, Andrew. Whether the prince will be as happy with the second drama as he is with the first remains to be seen.
While there was expectation that Scoop would reignite criticism of Andrew, Andrew’s friends are not the only ones to feel he has come out of it rather better than might have been expected. The Daily Mail columnist Liz Jones, for example, wrote that the show, “had a surprising effect on me… I started to feel sorry for Prince Andrew, something I never thought would happen.”
Jones argued that Scoop shows the Newsnight’s team courting of Andrew was duplicitous, and that their promises of an “opportunity to set the record straight” were “self-serving” and concluded, “Watching it, you’d have to conclude the prince was ‘played.’”
Hugo Rifkind in the London Times described Rufus Sewell’s Andrew as “dazzlingly charismatic.” Sewell himself told the Telegraph that while researching the role, people he met who worked with Andrew liked him, adding: “And there are people who still like him, you know?”
However, the historian Andrew Lownie told The Daily Beast that Andrew was deluded if he thought Scoop had done him any favors. He said the show had only created renewed interest in Andrew’s misdeeds, pointing, for an example, to an article in the Daily Mail about the obstacles Lownie has faced while trying to access official records of Andrew’s days as a trade ambassador for a biography he is working on.
“The whole thing has been stirred up again when it had gone quiet,” said Lownie. “Prince William said he never wanted the Panorama interview with his mother to be shown again because only by not being shown again do television interviews get forgotten.
“So it was extraordinary to see Andrew out riding on Friday morning, the day the film about his Newsnight interview came out. If ever there was a day to keep a low profile, that was it. But Andrew keeps pushing, keep testing because he is so keen to restore his reputation. He, and others, believe that he has been traduced unfairly. They say he may have acted foolishly but he has not been convicted of anything illegal. And the truth is he is having some success because he is so determined, and other members of the family are focused on other things.”
A representative for Andrew did not respond to a request for comment on how Andrew felt about the show.
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