‘Scoop’ star Rufus Sewell on finding the humanity in Prince Andrew: ‘I don’t like it when people create straw men’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
When Rufus Sewell was approached to play Prince Andrew in the new Netflix film “Scoop,” about the Duke of York’s infamous BBC Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis regarding Prince Andrew’s friendship with convicted sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein, Sewell had one response.
“I was delighted,” the former Emmy Award nominee tells Gold Derby in an exclusive video interview. “It felt like, ‘Okay, this is an acting gig.’”
Sewell has been a star for years, and since graduating from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, he has often been cast as charming and handsome cads and villains. But to play Prince Andrew, it brought him back to basics.
“I was flattered that the filmmakers thought that I could do it. And I also thought that I could do it,” Sewell says of the role. “In terms of the difference between the character and how people view me being quite wide, it reminded me of the kind of roles that I always used to do when I was at drama school. The kind of actor I always thought I wanted to be.”
Written by Peter Moffat (“Your Honor”) and directed by Philip Martin (“The Crown”), “Scoop” is based on the book by former BBC producer Sam McAlister (played in the film by Billie Piper) and focuses on the negotiations that went into securing the Prince Andrew interview. The film concludes with a lengthy recreation of the infamous conversation, with Sewell and Gillian Anderson as Maitlis mimicking their real-life counterparts in perfect harmony. That portion of the film was shot in two days, Sewell says, with great leeway afforded the performers by Martin.
“The director was wonderful in that way. He left us to do it to see what we were going to do once we settled into it without interfering,” Sewell says, noting he and Anderson had not rehearsed together until the scene was shot. “I’m a strong believer in the idea that I’d rather do a bad take than a perfect rehearsal. It doesn’t mean I don’t believe in rehearsing but there’s a certain way of realizing where you’re not trying to get the final performance. We were lucky enough that every time something happened, it was the first time we were filming which was a gift.”
Sewell says he spent most of his preparation time working on the interview, watching every beat to obsessively clock every phrase and movement Prince Andrew made as Maitlis was grilling him.
“He reminded me in a way of David Brent, the Ricky Gervais character from ‘The Office,’” Sewell says of Prince Andrew. “That’s a bit of a bold statement to make, but he did in the way that he had an eye deep inside the page as to what his effect would be on the person behind the interviewer. He wanted to express this studied and performative honesty about non-important facts – which is something that many of us have done consciously, or otherwise you’ll see a child do it too. I was very interested in that and I wanted to nail that as much as I possibly could.”
In real life, and as depicted in the film, Prince Andrew left the interview feeling good about his performance and the outcome. But the public perception was quite different. In the months that followed, Prince Andrew’s private secretary Amanda Thirsk (played by Keeley Hawes) resigned; later, Prince Andrew was stripped of his royal titles. (He also later settled a lawsuit with Virginia Giuffre, who had accused Prince Andrew of sexual assault. Prince Andrew has repeatedly denied those claims.)
Sewell’s performance, however, doesn’t make Prince Andrew an outright villain and the film avoids making moral judgments about his character.
“I don’t like it when people create straw men with writing or with performance. The truth is a bit more complex,” he says about Prince Andrew. “I got a review that accused me of humanizing him. And I thought that was hilarious. What do we think that means? To make someone seem better? I believe in humanizing, but that does not mean making someone seem nicer than they are, it is to show them as a human who is the product of their environment — as all humans are. I try to think in terms of a grayscale.”
“Scoop” is streaming on Netflix.
PREDICT the 2024 Emmy nominees through July 17
Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Don’t miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?
SIGN UP for Gold Derby’s free newsletter with latest predictions