When we heard the plotline of Netflix’s forthcoming Scoop—out Friday, and centering around Prince Andrew’s disastrous 2019 BBC Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis that effectively ended his royal career—we obviously knew that Andrew would play a key role in the movie. What we weren’t expecting? (Slight spoiler alert) The surprise character of Princess Beatrice, Andrew’s eldest daughter, who plays a pivotal role in the film as her father decides whether or not to take the interview on.
Royal expert Jennie Bond—who was royal correspondent for the BBC for 14 years—told The Daily Mail that Beatrice “will be annoyed and upset” and will be “dreading” the film’s release tomorrow and the “difficult time ahead” in its aftermath. Bond said the dramatization will “broadcast the whole story” of Andrew’s association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to an even wider audience, and added “It’s altogether very bad news for Andrew, and, indeed, for his whole family. Beatrice, in particular, will undoubtedly be annoyed and upset that her part in setting up and monitoring the interview will now be made so much more public.”
Last year, BBC producer Sam McAlister—who is played by Billie Piper in Scoop—revealed that Beatrice attended a negotiation meeting with her father ahead of the Newsnight interview, which is captured in the film. McAlister said the Duke of York announced he had brought someone with him to the negotiations between the BBC and Buckingham Palace, and she thought he meant he had brought along a lawyer.
“To be frank, the only thing worse than speaking to a prospective interviewee about allegations of sexual impropriety and sex with a 17-year-old girl is having to do so in front of his daughter,” McAlister wrote. “Princess Beatrice was polite and engaged but, unlike her father, she was evidently anxious about the meeting and clearly there to protect his interests. I’d heard she was close to the Queen. The prince’s eldest daughter was now, I felt, the person who could make the difference between us getting the interview or not.”
Beatrice is played by Charity Wakefield in Scoop, and just as she did in real life, took notes on a clipboard at the meeting and appeared “anxious.”
In April 2023, BBC interviewer Emily Maitlis revealed she feared the trainwreck interview “hurt” Beatrice and her younger sister, Princess Eugenie. At the time, in November 2019, Beatrice had recently announced her engagement to Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, who she was scheduled to marry in May 2020 but, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, ended up delaying until that July.
“It’s the first time the thought crossed my mind that maybe he was doing it for [Beatrice],” Maitlis said. “Your life has been hellish. You’ve had to read these headlines. You’re trying to get married. I’m going to do this to make it better for you. I don’t know if that’s true, but it crossed my mind.”
In a column for The Times, Maitlis said she also struggled “in the aftermath” with how Andrew’s revelations in the interview would impact Beatrice and Eugenie: “How could an interview that aimed to provide answers for vulnerable young women not end up hurting other vulnerable young women—his daughters—along the way?” she wrote.
With the benefit of hindsight, Maitlis questioned whether Andrew might have agreed to do the interview to clear his name for the sake of Beatrice, ahead of her wedding scheduled for just months later.
