One of the trending films on Netflix this week is “Scoop,” a political drama that explores the behind the scenes of the explosive 2019 BBC Newsnight with Prince Andrew about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. According to FlixPatrol, the movie is the sixth most-watched on the platform worldwide, only two days after its premiere.
The film stars Billie Piper as Sam McAlister, who was the interview booker who was able to get the interview with Prince Andrew at the time. It is based on her own account of the event, which she disclosed in her memori “Scoops: Behind the Scenes of the Most Shocking Interviews.”
Apart from Piper, the series stars Gillian Anderson as journalist Emily Maitlis and Rufus Sewell as Prince Andrew. The rest of the cast includes Romola Garai and Keeley Hawes. The film was directed by Emmyand BAFTA winner Philip Martin, who is known for his work for Netflix’s The Crown.
Netflix: ‘Scoop,’ highlights women in journalism
To McAlister, who was involved in the production of the film, the importance of “Scoop” is to showcase “women in their 40s and 50s depicted in a professional setting, going about their jobs to the best of their abilities with an extraordinary outcome.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by Anderson, who said that she loved about the movie is that it highlights the importance of these women in a male-dominated field, and how they “all of the women sit prominently in the story; you see them all working together to bring this interview to light.”
Apart from the interview, the movie showcases the great amount of work that went behind the scenes, especially when it came to securing the interview, which in real life took McAlister 13 months of negotiations with Amanda Thirsk, Prince Andrew’s publicist.
While, as always, there are dramatized differences between real life and the movie, some things are pretty accurate. For example, the recreation of the interview. “The level of detail, putting together exactly the same room, the camera angles, the lighting, the specifics of the table, the cables, the types of cameras, the carpet — everything is so ridiculously close,” McAlister told Netflix.
