Fact-checking Scoop: how accurate is Netflix's Prince Andrew drama?

Fresh from weathering the controversies of six series of The Crown – which actually become more inaccurate and fantastical as it went on – Netflix have returned to the royal fray with a new drama, Scoop, which depicts Prince Andrew’s disastrous and reputation-shredding 2019 Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis. There have been suggestions that the show’s focus on the Newsnight editor Sam McAlister is misleading and that a forthcoming Amazon Studios drama, A Very Royal Scandal, will offer a more accurate and rounded account of what went into that remarkable encounter between journalist and royal. 

Yet whether the subsequent drama – with Ruth Wilson as Maitlis and the ever-chameleonic Michael Sheen as the Duke of York – is an improvement or feels largely redundant, there’s no doubt that Scoop has thrown up its fair share of talking-point moments. Take, for example, the nude scene featuring Rufus Sewell’s Prince Andrew, shortly after he’s seen the interview broadcast on television. 

Whether or not the duke really did watch his reputational Waterloo from his bathtub is impossible to say, but Peter Moffat’s screenplay alternates between moments of (necessary) invention and speculation and carefully recreated scenes that might sound fanciful but are, in fact, wholly truthful, even as the show begins with the disclaimer that “certain elements have been fictionalised for dramatic purposes.” We fact-checked some of the most surprising and bizarre scenes revolving around the depiction of Andrew and the rest of the royals. 

Was the photo of Andrew and Epstein taken by a paparazzo? 

(Partly) true

We’re so used to seeing paparazzi depicted as the scum of the earth that it comes as a surprise to see Connor Swindells’ Jae Donnelly depicted in almost heroic terms in the tense opening scenes of Scoop, as the man who got the first picture of Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein together in New York in December 2010. The on-screen depiction, showing Donnelly frantically scrabbling up a rock in Central Park to get his shot after spending all night staking out Epstein’s townhouse, seems to suggest that Donnelly was motivated by a desperate desire to get his very own scoop, as well as establishing Epstein and Andrew’s association with much younger women. 

What the scene omits is any depiction of the News of the World’s involvement in the pursuit, not least the figure of the “fake sheikh” Mazher Mahmood, and the suggestion that, far from it being a lucky break based on sound journalistic instincts and good fortune, it was a carefully planned sting operation masterminded by Mahmood with a whole team of crack investigators and photographers behind him. Donnelly undoubtedly got the famous shot, but the set-up was rather more complex than Scoop implies. 

Was Princess Beatrice involved in the negotiations around Prince Andrew’s Newsnight appearance? 

True

One of the show’s most unexpected moments comes when, in a meeting to discuss the interview, Prince Andrew turns up with both his private secretary Amanda Thirsk and his daughter Princess Beatrice. At the time, Beatrice, who was never an official working royal, was Vice President of Partnerships and Strategies at a software company called Afiniti, and so rather than her presence being wholly necessary from a professional perspective, it is likely that it was an attempt to demonstrate that Andrew and his family were presenting a united front of solidarity. 

According to McAlister, Beatrice appeared “anxious” at the meeting, and that “[she] was polite and engaged, but, unlike her father, she was evidently anxious about the meeting and clearly there to protect his interests.” It has been speculated that one of Andrew’s reasons for agreeing to the interview was to clear his name in advance of his daughter’s wedding to the property developer Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi; if so, this was unsuccessful. 

Did Prince Andrew know Jimmy Savile?

False

At one point, the Duke of York quips, self-consciously, “I don’t know why everyone’s so obsessed by my friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. I knew Jimmy Savile so much better.” If this was intended as a self-deprecating joke, it falls flat, both on screen and off. Savile’s involvement with the royal family, although nowhere near as pervasive as his relationship with various leading politicians, was certainly an embarrassing truth, and his friendship with Prince Charles, in particular, must be a source of continued regret to the king. 

As for Andrew, it is not believed that he was as close to Savile as some of his family, or indeed that there was any substance to his character’s joke in the show. However, he himself was similarly tainted by association with the paedophile jester, appearing on an episode of Jim’ll Fix It in the Eighties, in which it is “fixed” for a young girl to receive a Valentine’s Day gift while on board a naval vessel. Viewed in the light of everything that came subsequently, this can only be regarded as inappropriate, not least the introductory voiceover that “Prince Andrew becomes part of Jimmy Savile’s dream team.”

Was Prince Andrew a teddy bear obsessive? 

True

The scene that will resonate longest for many in Scoop – yes, including the nude scene at the end – is when Prince Andrew, learning of Epstein’s arrest, is shown with his teddy bear collection, berating a junior member of staff for insufficient deference to his favourite stuffed kangaroo and angrily sending her away. Unlikely though it seems, this is, if anything, an under-representation of the truth. 

The duke’s former maid Charlotte Briggs told The Sun in 2022 that he had a collection of over 70 cuddly toys, many of which wore naval uniforms, and that he was exacting about where he wanted them to be placed, and how his favourites – two hippos and a black panther called “Daddy”, “Ducks” and “Prince” – had to be placed most prominently. As Briggs said subsequently, “As soon as I got the job, I was told about the teddies and it was drilled into me how he wanted them. I even had a day’s training. Everything had to be just right. It was so peculiar.” She remarked “It was so odd. After all, he was a grown man who had served in the Falklands.” 

Did Andrew believe that the interview was taking place with the Queen’s approval? 

Impossible to verify

The relationship between the Queen and her supposedly favourite son is a running theme throughout Scoop, as she is described by Andrew’s private secretary Amanda Thirsk as “a very good judge of character”. From her son’s introduction, promoting his ‘Pitch @ Palace’ initiative by saying “Don’t tell my mum” as he defaces a sign to permit the use of mobile phones in the State Rooms, and then subsequently he sighs at the thought of her ageing, saying “None of us are getting any younger.” 

While the detail of how “Mummy” would comb his hair before he was sent off to boarding school does little other than infantilise, rather than humanise, the duke – “it hurt, but I didn’t want her to stop” -  the implication in the show is that the interview was conducted with the Queen’s knowledge and approval – “she’s always right” - and only after its disastrous broadcast, necessitating Andrew’s withdrawal from public life, was this approval withdrawn. 

According to Maitlis, the monarch was shocked by the revelations in the interview; she said “It was only on the Saturday when the Queen had reportedly read the whole transcript that he received a tap on the shoulder by his security detail. And they said, I think, ‘Sir, you might have to come with us’. It was after the Queen had seen what the interview contained that I think it dawned on her before it dawned on him.” Perhaps her judgement of character was accurate, after all. 

Did Andrew compliment Emily Maitlis on her outfit before filming began? 

False

In the scene in which Andrew discusses the potential interview with the BBC team, there is an amusing moment in which McAlister lays bare his reputation as “Randy Andy” and “Air Miles Andy” to the surprised duke, making it clear, “with respect”, that his public associations are those of sex, girls and unearned privilege and that “this isn’t bad for your brand….this is your brand”. An amused Andrew guffaws and says “She’s sort of got a point.” 

This is a moment of dramatic invention on the part of the filmmakers, but the duke is also given a moment of cringeworthy flirtatious banter at the beginning of the Newsnight interview, when he points at Maitlis’s outfit and says, simply, “Trousers!” before making what sounds like a pleased harrumph at her appearance. Randy Andy, indeed. 

Did Andrew believe that the interview had gone well?

True

In the show, Andrew is shown preening and posturing after the Newsnight interview, arrogantly remarking to Maitlis that “I thought that all went very well”, to which she sardonically replies “Like a walk in the park.” In reality, Scoop if anything underplays Andrew’s reaction. He was sufficiently delighted with what he saw as a fluent and candid performance in the interview to take Maitlis on a tour of Buckingham Palace, and even suggested that she and her team stick around for an evening in the palace’s screening room. 

It was an easy opportunity to turn down. As Maitlis said later, “We crammed into a taxi and we were all eyeballing each other. We didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. We had got an interview the likes of which had never been seen before.” And so it has passed first into legend, and now into its semi-fictionalised dramatic form.