Yahoo Finance Prince Andrew's “Newsnight” Interview Producer Reveals 'Most Shocking Part' of Bombshell Conversation (Exclusive)
Sam McAlister tells PEOPLE what it was really like as BBC cameras rolled for "the scoop of the century"
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Sam McAlister attends the world premiere of "Scoop" at The Curzon Mayfair on March 27, 2024; Prince Andrew attends church on Christmas at Sandringham on December 25, 2023.Prince Andrew’s fall from grace began below the bright lights of a Newsnight interview, which former BBC producer Sam McAlister says was even more surreal in real life.
McAlister’s memoir about the infamous sit down with the Duke of York in 2019 around his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has inspired the upcoming Netflix movie Scoop, and she exclusively takes PEOPLE into the moment she knew the conversation would send shockwaves — let alone royal ramifications.
"It was one of those amazing things, that usually as a producer, what happens is you spend time talking to somebody before the cameras start rolling and they're sensational, and the second the cameras come on, it becomes very bland. This was the one time that didn't happen," McAlister tells PEOPLE.
"The experience for me was like things just kept getting higher and higher in terms of the stakes, and it was just extraordinary to hear all of that on camera. Because we'd heard some of it in private in a small room in Buckingham Palace a couple of days earlier, but to hear him say it for the world to see was the most shocking part of all, in a sense," she recalls. "It was unimaginable, some of the answers that he gave in public. And, of course, the public reaction told us that the public did not think that those answers were credible or good."
Related: Gillian Anderson Reveals Why She Initially Turned Down 'Scoop' Role: 'Seemed Like a Really Bad Idea'
McAlister secured the rare conversation after a year of painstaking negotiations with the palace, which kicked off with a pitch around Prince Andrew’s charitable work. But Epstein wound up back in the headlines after being arrested in July 2019 and charged in a federal indictment alleging he had "sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls at his homes."
"It started as, in a sense, a non-story, and then it became the biggest story in the world," she recalls.
As seen in the official trailer for the new movie starring Billie Piper as the plucky producer, Gillian Anderson as journalist Emily Maitlis and Rufus Sewell as Andrew, the ill-fated conversation was prefaced by a palace meeting with the Duke of York, his then-chief of staff, Amanda Thirsk (Keeley Hawes), and a "curveball" guest: his eldest daughter, Princess Beatrice.
"That conversation was on the Monday, they said yes on the Tuesday, and this interview happened on the Thursday and it went out on the Saturday," McAlister says, putting the real-world turn of events in context.
Related: A Timeline of Prince Andrew's Fall from Grace
Queen Elizabeth’s second son famously sat opposite Maitlis in the South Drawing Room of Buckingham Palace on November 14, 2019, for the BBC Newsnight interview where he discussed his links to the disgraced financier for the first time and allegations that he had sex with Virginia Guiffre when she was 17.
The conversation was full of other bombshells, such as Prince Andrew’s claim that he had "no recollection" of ever meeting Giuffre despite a widely circulated photo of them together with Ghislaine Maxwell, his alibi that he took Princess Beatrice to a Pizza Express in Woking on the date Giuffre claimed an encounter took place and his rebuttal that he couldn’t sweat (as Giuffre claimed in court papers that he had while dancing) due to an "overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War."
Prince Andrew has denied any wrongdoing and said he continued to "unequivocally regret my ill-judged association with Jeffrey Epstein," who died in prison while awaiting federal sex trafficking charges in August 2019, in the statement announcing his step back.
Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty
Then-Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Andrew on the balcony of Buckingham Palace during Trooping The Colour on June 8, 2019.The Duke of York was later stripped of his military titles and patronages by Queen Elizabeth in January 2022 amid Giuffre's civil sexual assault lawsuit, in which she alleged she was trafficked by Epstein and forced to have sex with the royal on three occasions between 1999 and 2002 when she was a teenager. An out-of-court settlement for an undisclosed amount was reached the following month.
Prince Andrew has continued to occasionally attend events with the royal family since, most recently the memorial service for the late King Constantine of Greece in February and King Charles’ church outing on Easter Sunday.
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Prince Andrew leaves the Easter Matins Service at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, on March 31, 2024.Can't get enough of PEOPLE's Royals coverage? Sign up for our free Royals newsletter to get the latest updates on Kate Middleton, Meghan Markle and more!
Despite the public outings, McAlister says the world knows he’s no longer truly in the royal fold.
"I think that the public are very wise in general, and they understand the difference between being able to go to a couple of social occasions and being a full-time working, returning member of the royal family. And I think there's a big space between the two. So, whatever superficial moments there may be that seem that in some sense he's being brought back into the fold, I think in the fold of public opinion, he is sorely unwelcome," she explains.
"We are still talking about it these years later, and I'm sure that we'll still be talking about it for generations to come, in terms of its journalistic and royal significance," adds the author of Scoops: Behind the Scenes of the BBC’s Most Shocking Interviews.
PETER MOUNTAIN/NETFLIX
Rufus Sewell as Prince Andrew and Gillian Anderson as Emily Maitlis in the Netflix movie "Scoop."McAlister left the BBC after a decade in 2021 and is now a senior visiting fellow at the London School of Economics. She says she hopes the film reminds viewers of journalism’s critical role in democracy today and that they root for her character as the stars aligned for her to achieve what proved to be a "journalistic jewel."
"I was an ordinary woman in an extraordinary situation, trying to feed my kid on the bus, getting kebabs, trying to do my best in the workplace, working part-time, fretting like most normal people do about all of life's rich tapestry. And it ended up being the scoop of the century," she says.
Scoop premieres on Netflix on Friday, April 5.
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