[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_text module_class=”custom-post-title” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_font=”Black Han Sans|700||on|||||” header_text_align=”center” header_font_size=”46px” header_letter_spacing=”4px” custom_margin=”25px||5px||false|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”Black Han Sans|||on|||||” text_text_color=”#000000″ header_4_font=”|||on|||||” header_4_text_align=”center” text_orientation=”center” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n
Words by Sam McAlister<\/strong><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2024\/04\/GettyImages-826421594.jpg” alt=”Jennifer Aniston” title_text=”16th IAAF World Athletics Championships London 2017 – Day One” force_fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Can you imagine yourself in Buckingham Palace, sitting 15 feet behind Prince Andrew during that BBC Newsnight interview in November 2019? Because that\u2019s exactly what happened to me.<\/p>\n It\u2019s still hard to believe he said \u2018yes\u2019 to the infamous interview, even though it was my job, as a \u2018booker\u2019 at Newsnight, to convince people to come on the show. To be honest, most of the time it was a thankless task \u2013 endless rejection, often working for months on something, only for it to fall at the last hurdle. <\/p>\n This was the culmination of over a year of negotiations, visits to the Palace, hoping against hope, countless emails and eternal optimism. But I will be honest with you, I never actually thought he would say yes.<\/p>\n But he did.<\/p>\n And then, four years later, I\u2019m sitting in Buckingham Palace again. Except this time, it\u2019s an exquisitely reconstructed one, on a film set near Luton. Andrew and Emily Maitlis are in the room again, except now it\u2019s the usually exquisitely chiselled actor Rufus Sewell (three hours of prosthetics) and the iconic Gillian Anderson (wig, no prosthetics) as the fictional Prince and presenter. We are on the set of the movie \u2018Scoop\u2019 based on my book. Billie Piper is now \u2018Sam\u2019 \u2013and she\u2019s shaking her blonde curls (wig) in the fake room, in the Netflix version of my life. We look so alike, some crew members even confuse us. A paper prints a picture of Billie. It\u2019s actually me! The days are a whirl of set changes, trailers, cameras, action.<\/p>\n It’s next level surreal. It\u2019s next level wonderful. <\/p>\n Of course, the film version, out last week, is a dramatisation, so there\u2019s some moments of difference (watching me write 100 emails wouldn\u2019t be much fun to watch). It\u2019s penned by the masterful screenwriter, Peter Moffat (Silks and Your Honor) but so many moments are exactly what happened. Some of which may surprise you\u2026<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”custom-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_font=”Libre Bodoni|||on|||||” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#333333″ header_2_font_size=”40px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n The last negotiation was indeed face to face in Buckingham Palace. With Prince Andrew himself and his private secretary, Amanda Thirsk (played by Keeley Hawes). Three Newsnighters (myself, Emily and the Deputy Editor) crammed into a tiny room, within touching distance of one another. And yes, there was a surprise appearance from his daughter, Princess Beatrice (played by the gorgeous Charity Wakefield). Her attendance was a total curveball \u2013 imagine talking about the allegations of sexual assault and the Prince\u2019s friendship with the convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein, in front of his child\u2026<\/p>\n Perhaps the most unbelievable part is where \u2018Sam\u2019 calls HRH \u2018Randy Andy\u2019 to his face. But I absolutely did. There\u2019s a point in a negotiation when you know you have a rapport, where it\u2019s all or nothing, and I calculated that honesty was the best policy \u2013 my argument was that the public saw him as guilty and, if he wanted to change the conversation about him, it was up to him to do so. My colleagues collectively inhaled when I said it, but, luckily for me, he responded with a laugh. My bluntness didn\u2019t faze him. He said \u2018yes\u2019 just 24 hours later.<\/p>\n On the day, a lot of things happened that couldn\u2019t fit into 102 minutes. Most magically, I got offered a martini (my beverage of choice) by one of the lovely Palace staff; I had arrived looking ashen, so she offered me a drink, and I glibly asked for a martini. I had to decline \u2013 I was delirious at this point \u2013 but she kindly told me it was one of Queen Elizabeth\u2019s favourite tipples too.<\/p>\n As the interview room was being set up with the vast detritus of television production, Prince Andrew suddenly appeared. I went to chat to him. You\u2019re really trying to keep to small talk, given the seriousness of the occasion, so I asked about the room. Turns out, he said, that the Palace cinema club was going to be convened there later that evening. A giant cinema projector was hidden behind some heavy wooden vaulted doors. The prince told me what the film was going to be \u2013 \u2018Judy\u2019 with Renee Zellweger. He asked if I\u2019d seen it (I hadn\u2019t) and then opened the giant doors to show me the projector. A small, but unforgettable, moment. <\/p>\n Then Emily arrived. In the movie he bellows \u2018trousers!\u2019 as she\u2019s usually wearing a skirt or dress. But that didn\u2019t happen. Or at least I didn\u2019t hear it (a large number of people were spoken to by the productions teams at Voltage and Lighthouse Productions, so someone else may have heard that).<\/p>\n The interview scene \u2013 with Rufus and Gillian \u2013 is verbatim. The room is immaculately reconstructed by the crew. Every detail is the same \u2013 from the chairs and art, to the tiny table and \u2018ER\u2019 marked glasses and water bottle between them. And all of the accoutrements of TV are also the same \u2013 each camera and light a replica of what the actual crews used, based on months of research. <\/p>\n What happened after was also the same, but of course, the world hadn\u2019t seen that. As the cameras stopped rolling, the journalists all looked ashen. After that avalanche of terrible answers, we knew we had something extraordinary and important. Emily looked professional but perturbed. And Prince Andrew? He looked pleased as punch. It\u2019s true that he took Emily on a tour of the Palace. True also that those iconic pictures of them both striding the place corridors were taken after this terrible interview occurred. Zoom in on his face. See how happy he looks\u2026.<\/p>\n As for me, I left the Palace and made my way back to the BBC. We could all barely believe what we had witnessed. <\/p>\n It\u2019s mad that in just two years, I\u2019ve gone from Newsnight to Netflix. It\u2019s a tribute to the power and importance of journalism and truth in these uncertain times. If you value it, please consume it. Or the powerful will sleep more soundly at night.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ divider_position=”center” divider_weight=”2px” module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”0px||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-texts” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|||on|||||” text_orientation=”center” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n Photo: <\/b>Getty<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I left the Palace and made my way back to the BBC. We could all barely believe what we had witnessed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":2418,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"kschwarz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2417"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2423,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2417\/revisions\/2423"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}‘Perhaps the most unbelievable part is where \u2018Sam\u2019 calls HRH \u2018Randy Andy\u2019 to his face. But I absolutely did.’<\/h2>\n
Our film is an homage to the BBC, to the team at Newsnight, to Emily and to the brilliant Editor at the time, Esme Wren (played by Romola Garai). And to the women journalists who made it all happen.<\/p>\n