‘Scoop’ tells the media story of the downfall of Prince Andrew- in a dull way
Future movies that touch on the Jeffrey Epstein story will hopefully find a way to be more interesting than this
“Why won’t Hollywood make a movie about Jeffrey Epstein,” is a question often asked on some of the less reputable corners of social media, usually connected to a fake list of Hollywood celebrities who supposedly visited his island.
The truth is, Epstein’s sex trafficking ring is a pretty horrific story, and I’m not sure if anyone is going to line up to buy tickets to watch a blow-by-blow of how Epstein’s sex abuse worked. Julie K. Brown’s book on Epstein, “Perversion of Justice,” is pretty great, but I’m not sure how cinematic it is.
We finally have a movie that touches on the Epstein scandal, albeit not from Hollywood – it’s a British production — and not with Epstein as a character.
Scoop, instead, is the story of how a group of journalists from Newsnight on The BBC negotiated to get an interview with Prince Andrew in 2019. In that interview, the Duke of York was asked about his friendship with Epstein, and he blew the interview spectacularly. The episode ended his career as a member of the royal family in good standing.
Rufus Sewell plays the prince long known as “Randy Andy,” while Gillian Anderson is Emily Maitlis, the journalist who interviewed him. Billie Piper plays producer Sam McAlister, who gets a great deal of screen time, presumably because the film is an adaptation of her book.
The problem is, while the interview segment is riveting, nothing leading up to it is all that interesting. Scoop doesn’t do any of the things that the best journalism movies do- there’s barely any conflict, nor do we get the impression that these journalists are taking a huge risk by going up against Buckingham Palace.
Are journalists traditionally afraid to cross the palace, especially on something scandalous? What made this case different? Those questions aren’t given the weight that they probably should. They’re discussed briefly, but there’s no real palpable risk.
Spotlight created high stakes by essentially treating the Boston Archdiocese like the mob, but Scoop does nothing like that. There’s not much in the way of internal dissent or pushback from bosses.
If you’re mad that The Crown wrapped up before it got to any of the juicy stuff from the last decade, like Harry and Megan, Prince William’s supposed affairs, and the queen’s death, this is a consolation prize. (Gillian Anderson is much more convincing than she was during her run as Margaret Thatcher on that show.)
The film is constructed nearly identically to Frost/Nixon, the 2008 movie about the famous 1977 interview between British journalist David Frost and former President Richard Nixon (that film was written by The Crown creator Peter Morgan, based on his earlier play.) Frost/Nixon, though, did just about everything better, both making the negotiations and the interview part more dramatic.
Would I have been more interested in this movie if it involved journalists whose work I know well? Perhaps. But overall, Scoop is far from the best movie of this kind.
Scoop lands on Netflix on Friday.