Sewell spent three hours a day in the makeup chair in order to resemble the Duke of York, while Anderson studied the interview and watched episodes of Newsnight to capture Maitlis’ mannerisms.
The film, due for release in spring, is a behind-the-scenes look at how the interview was secured and the way it unfolded, framed as a tribute to the work of the four women responsible.
It is based on Scoops by Sam McAlister, the “booker extraordinaire” on Newsnight who negotiated the interview in which the Duke was questioned about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
McAlister is played on screen by Billie Piper. In addition to Anderson as Maitlis, the film features Keeley Hawes as Amanda Thirsk, the Duke’s right-hand woman. Romola Garai plays Esme Wren, the Newsnight editor.
“It’s rare that you see a representation of women, all in their 40s and 50s. This is an opportunity to see hard-working women behind the scenes at every stage,” McAlister told the Telegraph.
She was on set during filming and said Anderson’s resemblance to Maitlis is “astonishing”.
Gillian Anderson and Rufus Sewell star as Emily Maitlis and the Duke of York in the upcoming Netflix film Scoop. Photo / Netflix
“It felt like being there with Emily,” McAlister said. “Everything about her physicality and her performance is on the money. They have a similar intellect as well. Emily is very methodical. She worked very hard on every interview; she trains, she studies. And my impression of Gillian was exactly the same. She was studying the material, she was studying Emily, and she was working on that project in an intellectual way as well as a dramatic way.”
Philip Martin, Scoop’s director, said of Sewell: “Rufus spent about three hours in the makeup chair. He started really early in the morning and had to go through this strange process of putting a bald wig on before the other stuff went on. We worked very hard to make all of the prosthetics flexible and light enough so that he could act through it all.”
“With Gillian, there are no prosthetics - it’s makeup and a wig and mannerisms,” said Martin.
Both actors spent hours watching the interview as part of their preparation, and Anderson also studied Maitlis’ presenting style on Newsnight.
“Sometimes people can do a really brilliant impersonation but not capture something about the person. What Gillian and Rufus have done so brilliantly is get the spirit of the people that they’re playing, so that it feels real,” said Martin.
The room at Buckingham Palace in which the interview took place is also recreated in minute detail, and the camera angles from the original BBC interview are matched exactly.
The film, with a script by Stephen Moffat, will not be a hatchet job on the Duke. “We don’t take a side - we’re not saying, ‘Oh, isn’t he great’, or, ‘Oh, isn’t he evil’. It’s for the viewer to draw their own inferences,” said McAlister.
Martin, who also directed the first two series of The Crown, said: “I think lots of people would tie themselves up in knots because they didn’t want to appear to approve of Andrew, or to disapprove of him. Rufus wasn’t afraid of that.
“Andrew was slightly the Harry of his era - he was seen as a great communicator with great people skills in his 20s and 30s, a person who could get things done. I think Rufus really understood that side of things, and the sense that Andrew is older now but has a sparkle and a kind of charisma to him.
“It doesn’t feel like we’re pointing an arrow at him and saying, ‘This is a bad guy…’. You’re seeing a person, and that’s a real tribute to Rufus’ take on it.”
Emily Maitlis and Prince Andrew during their meeting at Buckingham Palace for the BBC Newsnight special, in which the Duke of York's part eventually led to his fall from grace. Photo / BBC
‘A bounce and a bite to it’
Martin said the tone of the film would reflect the absurd elements of the interview as well as the serious issues at hand.
“There was something slightly surreal about the whole process. So we’ve tried to make it have a bounce and a bite to it. It moves fast and it’s absorbing to watch.”
McAlister, a criminal barrister before joining the Newsnight team, left the BBC to write her book and said it felt “bonkers” for her behind-the-scenes producer role to be the subject of a Netflix film.
“It’s nice that there’s so much interest in the story, and I’m really looking forward to watching Emily’s,” McAlister said.
She lamented the cuts to Newsnight, which will see the BBC Two show curtailed to a half-hour slot with fewer staff.
“It’s a real shame. This story changed the course of journalistic history. It was a huge thing, and where do you get that kind of journalism? The places that you get it now are diminishing by the second, so to see Newsnight culled is painful because the powerful will sleep more comfortably in their beds at night.
Prince Andrew appears on BBC Newsnight with Emily Maitlis with regard to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Photo / BBC
“It’s a very important type of journalism and it’s disappearing before our eyes,” McAlister said.
However, she acknowledged that Newsnight’s viewing figures are falling. “It’s what I call ‘the beautiful hypocrisy’,” she said.
“I often do events where people say, ‘Newsnight’s amazing, I can’t believe it’s being culled’. And then I’ll politely enquire when they last watched it, and 90 per cent of the time they haven’t watched it for two or three years. The space between what people value in theory and what they actually consume is quite vast.”
