Prince Andrew’s excruciating BBC interview with Emily Maitlis was so explosive that one television depiction is apparently not enough.
Four years on from the embattled royal’s grilling on Newsnight over his friendship with the late billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, two of the world’s biggest streaming titans are going head-to-head with their own dramatisations of the so-called ‘scoop of the decade’.
In one corner we have the Netflix film Scoop, based on a book written by Sam McAlister, the former BBC production journalist who landed the interview. In the other, Amazon Prime’s series A Very Royal Scandal, which Maitlis herself is executive producing.
Considering even the most ardent royal watcher is unlikely to watch both, competition between the dramas is fierce. Particularly as McAlister and Maitlis are said to be ‘arch-enemies’ after the interviewer was accused of ignoring the vital contribution her producer made in brokering the Prince’s interview.
At the time, Prince Andrew’s performance had royal commentators reeling, with one describing it as ‘a plane crashing into an oil tanker, causing a tsunami, triggering a nuclear explosion-level bad’ — after his increasingly bizarre answers.
Prince Andrew’s excruciating BBC interview with Emily Maitlis was so explosive that one television depiction is apparently not enough
In one corner we have the Netflix film Scoop, starring Gillian Anderson as Emily Maitlis
In the other, Amazon Prime’s series A Very Royal Scandal, with Ruth Wilson playing the former BBC journalist. Maitlis herself is executive producing the Amazon Prime series
Who can forget his claim that he was incapable of sweating and that he could not have had improper relations with then 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre because he was at Pizza Express in Woking, Surrey, on the night in question?
And it seems that the stars have been queuing up to take part in the eagerly anticipated adaptations. With money no object for either streaming giant, they have been battling it out for the ultimate A-list cast. Friends of McAlister have said ‘she definitely thinks Scoop’s actors and actresses are the better ones. She literally has to pinch herself’.
McAlister is ‘over the moon’ at signing The Crown’s Gillian Anderson to play Maitlis and, according to friends, ‘so, so, so excited’ about Billie Piper playing her. Rufus Sewell is Prince Andrew, while Keeley Hawes is starring as Andrew’s private secretary of the time, Amanda Thirsk.
Meanwhile, last week, Emily Maitlis was said to be ‘thrilled’ to unveil Hollywood actor Michael Sheen as the Prince for A Very Royal Scandal. Ruth Wilson, a Golden Globe winner for drama The Affair, will take the role of Maitlis and The Thick Of It’s Joanna Scanlan will play Thirsk.
As for the scripts, McAlister boasts British playwright and screenwriter Peter Moffat writing her one-part drama — with Philip Martin, who worked on seven episodes of The Crown in 2017, directing.
Maitlis has gone one better for her three-part series, signing Bafta-nominated director Julian Jarrold, who as well as heading up The Crown also stepped in to work on Sky Atlantic’s drama This England, which told the story of Boris and Carrie Johnson during the pandemic.
Ultimately, though, it won’t be the cast and crew who dictate the success of either drama — but who gets it to the small screen first. And it seems that Netflix and McAlister are winning the race to transmission. While there is no official date for when either of the dramas will air, Scoop has finished filming, while A Very Royal Scandal is thought to be less than halfway through.
One insider told the Mail: ‘This was always going to be a race against time but Sam [McAlister] got in there first and she is definitely, at the moment, some months ahead.’
Emily Maitlis was said to be ‘thrilled’ to unveil Hollywood actor Michael Sheen as Prince William for A Very Royal Scandal
Sam McAlister, the former BBC production journalist who landed the interview, said that the actors were better in Scoop. Rufus Sewell is playing Prince Andrew in the Netflix series
Ruth Wilson was spotted on set in London with a blonde bob, similar to the haircut that Maitlis had prior to the infamous interview
McAlister published her book, Scoops: Behind The Scenes Of The BBC’s Most Shocking Interviews in July 2022 — with the Netflix deal announced last autumn. Filming began earlier this year with on-set pictures appearing in February.
Maitlis’s A Very Royal Scandal was first discussed in the summer of 2022 — with Amazon only confirming their involvement last week.
Those on Team Netflix were said to have been ‘amused’ at how angry the former BBC star would have been at seeing her former colleague, McAlister, race ahead of her project. ‘It must really irk Emily that the production girl beat her to it,’ one said. ‘Not only did she have to see all of the pictures of the filming taking place, but there is no doubt now that Scoop will be released first.’
And there’s no doubt that rivalry between the women is ‘absolutely real’. While at the BBC, McAlister reportedly spent months forming a relationship with private secretary Amanda Thirsk before holding a series of meetings with her at Buckingham Palace.
Despite being a high-flyer, she was paid a fraction of the £325,000 annual salary Maitlis earned for the show. So when Maitlis and Newsnight editor Esme Wren appeared on the cover of the Radio Times in July 2020, and failed to mention McAlister’s pivotal role in the interview, McAlister wasn’t best pleased.
In the piece, Wren said: ‘We delivered a quite exceptional piece of journalism.’
No credit was given to McAlister despite the fact that she started the negotiations and spearheaded the meeting between Newsnight bosses and Thirsk, the Prince and his daughter, Beatrice.
In her book about the first time she met Andrew, along with Maitlis and Newsnight deputy editor Stewart Maclean, McAlister wrote: ‘I hadn’t slept a wink all weekend. I’d been prepping, reading, talking to people who had met Prince Andrew to gauge how to approach him. Then I had been rehearsing possible questions in my head, thinking about what their sticking points would be, gaming every possible calibration and option.’
As for how she felt to be erased from the story, a source said: ‘Sam tried to laugh at it. It seemed deeply baffling that two women would not mention another, far more junior woman in an interview where they were talking about how the interview came about.’
McAlister has now left the BBC, where some of her former colleagues are said to resent how she has placed herself front and centre in the whole affair.
One can only imagine their anger if Scoop triumphs and McAlister gets the sweetest revenge.
