Netflix's new Prince Andrew movie indulges our desire for royal secrets

After a disastrous interview with the BBC in 2019 about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew stepped away from royal duties and public life.

The story behind how that interview came to be is the focus of the new Netflix movie, Scoop. It's the first of two dramatizations about the infamous interview, with Amazon Studios working on a three-part miniseries.

Today on Commotion, U.K. movie critic Hanna Flint and royal watcher Ellie Hall join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to talk about why audiences still want to see the royals portrayed on screen.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast on your favourite podcast player.

LISTEN | Today's episode on YouTube:

Elamin: I think this movie gets at all the wild dynamics between the Royal family and the media, and the way that their relationship is so tenuous. It really depicts the Royal family as completely out of touch and in this bubble, because the way this movie portrays the Royal family is that they believe there's all this goodwill that is banked…. And then you have Prince Andrew at the end of the conversation, he believes this interview went really well, because for a certain generation of royal, it feels like just by virtue of making yourself available, then you are doing the public a favor. How has the media's relationship with the Royal family changed over the last maybe five, ten years or so, in your view Hanna?

Hanna: I think with Prince Andrew, what is so interesting is just the kind of language in which they would cover it  — he's been friends with Epstein for years … and people wouldn't touch it. People wouldn't really go there with certain things because it's the Royal family. I think nowadays what you are seeing, and which I'm kind of grateful for, I guess there's more of an effort to actually scrutinize.

But I will say this film feels quite navel-gazey about the BBC, as if it's doing the best work possible when actually they're also part of the problem, and I found it quite distasteful how little it focused on the actual victims. There was literally no voice there. And I get it; there's certain angles to it. But the whole point about this interview was that he refused to acknowledge and apologize. That's the thing…. So for me, this is really going, "Look at us. We're changing lives here. We did that. We started a Twitter conversation. We got Prince Andrew." But it's like, OK, what about the wider ramifications? I find it a little bit distasteful how much they were marginalizing the actual victims in this kind of story in favour of, "Let's look at how great we are at getting a scoop."

Ellie: Yeah, I really think that the centering of the BBC and the navel-gazing was something that does make this movie feel a little uncomfortable. I mean, did you notice there was no actor playing Virginia Giuffre?

Elamin: It's worth noting that this movie is based on a memoir by Sam McAlister, who was the producer who booked Prince Andrew, and so that might narrow the scope a little bit of how the movie ends up treating this story.

This is the first of two dramatizations of this Prince Andrew interview. Amazon is working on this mini-series from the perspective of the BBC journalists who interviewed him…. Why are we so hungry for fictionalized content about the royals? Why are we so eager to use them as a lens to sort of understand this moment right now?

Ellie: I think that on some level, people are telling this story because they would like to see more accountability with the Royal family. Watching any little bit of content that makes it look like there are consequences to actions, I think that's a big attraction of the Prince Andrew story. But also I think the Queen's death has something to do with it, too…. I think we're going to see more and more fictionalized stuff, possibly even more reporting, because with the Queen gone, I think for some Royal reporters it's a little bit more open-season on the Royal family. You can go and look at some things because no one's going to be like, "Oh, but we love the Queen. She's the grandmother."

WATCH | Official trailer for Scoop:

Elamin: Hanna, what is it about the Royal family and the content that we want to keep creating about them?

Hanna: I think it's just feeding the beast of wanting to know a family that has historically been very guarded in their public image…. They have maintained a very clear wall between who they actually are and the public image. I think people are very keen to know, and I think art in a way kind of uses lies to tell the truth — one of my favorite quotes from V for Vendetta. But I also think they're celebrities, right? We love anything about celebrities — all this about knowing the unknowable. And as you said Ellie, now that the Queen's dead, I think it feels a bit more like fair game to take them apart. And I'm like, go for it.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jean Kim.