Image the scene. It’s November 2019, and I’m sitting in Buckingham Palace in England. I’m on an ornate golden chair, pushed up in opposition to the wall of the south drawing room, staring nervously on the barely frayed however elegant red-and-gold carpeted ground. The room is bigger than most London flats, and I’m simply 15 ft behind the chair of the Queen’s “favourite son,” Prince Andrew. He’s seated along with his again to me, his left foot tapping again and again on the palace ground.
In my line of sight is famend BBC Newsnight journalist Emily Maitlis, who’s about to conduct the interview of her life about Prince Andrew’s friendship with prolific intercourse offender and trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and in regards to the allegations of sexual assault made in opposition to him by Virginia Giuffre. It’s an interview that can successfully topple a prince. The ambiance is electrical. There’s a profound silence amongst the entire tv crew. The lights are set, the cameras are prepared, the producers and palace workers are utterly nonetheless.
After which it begins …
What adopted was a grasp class in how to not reply questions in an interview. In case you haven’t seen it, spoiler alert, it didn’t go nicely for Prince Andrew. Throughout these 48 minutes, the Duke of York gave replies that would have launched a thousand memes. He stated he couldn’t have dedicated the alleged offenses as a result of he was at a Pizza Categorical within the city of woking along with his daughter, that he had a medical situation which meant he couldn’t have been sweating whereas dancing at a nightclub with Giuffre, and that he didn’t remorse staying with Epstein after he’d been convicted of sexual offenses as a result of it was a “handy place to remain.” Simply 4 days after the interview aired, after the worldwide condemnation of his solutions, the identical palace issued a press release that Prince Andrew was stepping again from his public position, successfully sacked by his personal mom, the Queen. Due to the facility of that interview, the facility of journalism, he stays a pariah almost 5 years later.
So how on earth did that interview occur, and why on earth did he conform to do it? It’s nonetheless exhausting to imagine he stated sure, though it was my job, as a booker at Newsnight, to steer folks to come back on the present. To be trustworthy, more often than not it was a thankless process — limitless rejection, usually working for months on one thing, just for it to fall on the final hurdle.
The precise 2019 interview between Emily Maitlis and Prince Andrew.
Screenshot
This interview was the end result of greater than a yr of negotiations, visits to the palace, hoping in opposition to hope, numerous emails and everlasting optimism. However I shall be trustworthy with you: I by no means truly thought he would say sure.
However he did.
After which, 4 years later, I’m sitting in Buckingham Palace once more. Besides this time, it’s an exquisitely reconstructed one, on a movie set, some place outdoors London. And Prince Andrew and Emily Maitlis are in
the room once more, besides now it’s the often exquisitely chiseled actor Rufus Sewell (after hours of prosthetics) and the enduring Gillian Anderson because the fictional prince and presenter. We’re on the set of the Netflix movie Scoop, which relies on my e-book. It’s past my wildest goals. Billie Piper performs me — magnificently bedecked in my on a regular basis apparel (assume black fake leather-based, pretend fur, snakeskin boots, lashings of lip gloss, large purse, even huger sun shades), and he or she’s shaking her blond curls (wig) within the pretend room within the onscreen model of my life.
There’s a scene within the film the place I’m chatting to my mum after a very bruising day within the workplace (nicely, Billie is chatting to my actress mum, Amanda Redman), and he or she asks me one thing essential — “Does it matter?” And, by God, this job and these interviews, they mattered.
Piper (left) and McAlister on the set of Scoop.
Courtesy of Topic
Any such journalism — holding highly effective folks to account, asking the exhausting questions, looking for the reality with out favor — issues greater than ever. And it’s by no means felt extra in peril. Newsnight itself is now a shorter program, and all of the BBC journalists depicted in our film are actually doing completely different jobs (myself included). Each day, there’s a new story of jobs cuts and severe journalism in danger. It’s the unhappy irony that the worldwide success of Scoop comes at a time when a majority of these scoops are in additional peril than ever.
Our movie is an homage to the BBC, to the crew at Newsnight, to Emily Maitlis and to the good editor on the time, Esme Wren (performed by Romola Garai). And to the ladies journalists who made all of it occur.
It’s a salutary reminder of the facility and significance of journalism and reality in these unsure instances, to the BBC and to the numerous journalists struggling behind the scenes, simply as I did, making an attempt to carry energy and democracy to account.
Each day journalists everywhere in the world contact me to say that Scoop has impressed them and made them really feel they should stick with it.
I really feel happy with our film, happy with what all of us achieved. Grateful that Netflix determined to carry this story to life for the world. In case you worth this type of accountability, this type of truth-seeking, please devour it.
If not, the highly effective will sleep extra soundly at evening.
This story first appeared in an August stand-alone concern of The Hollywood Reporter journal. To obtain the journal, click on right here to subscribe.