Scoop director on difficult tonal balance of "inadvertently funny story"
"The interview itself has not only a serious side to it, but also a surreal side to it," said Philip Martin.
New Netflix film Scoop seems destined to be one of the most talked about films of the year, given that it dramatises the seismic Prince Andrew interview that became a major discussion point when it was broadcast on Newsnight in 2019.
The interview – about Prince Andrew's friendship with Jeffrey Epstein – saw the royal offer a series of bizarre responses to Emily Maitlis's questions, including references to a Pizza Express in Woking and his supposed inability to sweat.
Those responses, unsurprisingly, led to a great deal of ridicule on social media, something which is heavily referenced in the film.
Now, director Philip Martin has explained how it was important to get the right tonal balance between those jokes and the very serious nature of the allegations levelled against Andrew, which he has always strongly denied.
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"I think that one of the things that we all tried to do was to to balance both those sides of the story," Martin told RadioTimes.com during an exclusive interview.
"It's a very serious story in many ways, but it's also inadvertently a funny story. And I think that sometimes films can present you with a binary choice: 'This is a serious film, it's all serious', or 'This is a funny film, it's all funny.'"
He continued: "And I think that somehow combining those two is part of this story, because the interview in and of itself was something that was covering very serious territory, but in some ways doing it in a way that made people sort of question the answers."
Read more:
- Scoop review: Well performed but ultimately surface level
- Scoop director says Rufus Sewell “humanises” Prince Andrew
He added: "But yes, the interview itself has not only a serious side to it, but also a surreal side to it. And it was trying to balance those two, and trying to tell a story that had energy and momentum to it was [also] part of it...
"It's there in the script, it's there in the writing. But it's also... we tried to put it there into the film. And social media, the world that Andrew's interview comes out into is like that, I think. It's very, you know... it's a world of multiple opinions."
Scoop stars Rufus Sewell as Prince Andrew, Gillian Anderson as Emily Maitlis and Billie Piper as Sam McAlister – the former Newsnight guest booker who secured the interview and from whose perspective the film is told.
Scoop is now available to stream on Netflix. Sign up for Netflix from £4.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.
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Authors
Patrick Cremona is the Senior Film Writer at Radio Times, and looks after all the latest film releases both in cinemas and on streaming. He has been with the website since October 2019, and in that time has interviewed a host of big name stars and reviewed a diverse range of movies.
