With King Charles out of commission and Kate recovering from abdominal surgery, the British royal family starting lineup has been pretty lean – and it was lean to begin with – so Prince Andrew’s sweat glands might have miraculously started working again in hopes that, perhaps, he might come out of retirement and take a few plays. Until Netflix came along and told him to sit the f-ck down, because nobody is going to want to hear from him after Scoop comes out. 

 

Scoop premieres on April 5 and it’s based on one of the stories in Sam McAlister’s book, Scoops; she is the producer who secured the interview with Prince Andrew and Emily Maitlis for BBC Newsnight that would torpedo his royal status and result in his removal from royal duty.

 

Billie Piper plays Sam, Gillian Anderson is Emily Maitlis, and Rufus Sewell is Prince Andrew, aka “Randy Andy” which is what Sam calls him, to his face, in the trailer. The trailer is hilarious, exactly what we wanted from this project – comedy, camp, and teddy bears!

Photo from Scoop

That’s Rufus, in his role as Andrew, in a scene from the film with a teddy bear randomly propped up on a chair, referring to Andrew’s, um, fondness for the teddy bear collection and how they were arranged in his bedroom. He allegedly used to shout and pout if his staff messed up the order of how and where they were supposed to be positioned. I am not exaggerating. 

 

According to a former maid, Charlotte Briggs, at Buckingham Palace via Vanity Fair:

“As soon as I got the job, I was told about the teddies and it was drilled into me how he wanted them,” she said. “I even had a day’s training. Everything had to be just right. It was so peculiar.” She added that the bears were collected from all over the world and many were dressed up like sailors.

Briggs explained that every day she would organize the collection so all of the largest bears were in the back and the rest were placed in descending order according to size. At night, Briggs or another maid would then have to use a diagram to place the bears in their designated spots throughout the bedroom. She said that the smaller bears would usually be stacked in an unused fireplace, while some of his more beloved stuffed toys, such as two hippos and a black panther named “Daddy,” “Ducks,” and “Prince,” were placed on his bed or around the room. But Andrew’s two favorite teddy bears were always placed in mahogany thrones by his bedside.”

 

This was corroborated by a royal protection officer, Paul Page, in the documentary Ghislaine, Prince Andrew, and the Pedophile, who said that: 

“It had about 50 or 60 stuffed toys positioned on the bed and basically there was a card the inspector showed us in a drawer and it was a picture of these bears all in situ.” He continued, “The reason for the laminated picture was if those bears weren’t put back in the right order by the maids, he would shout and scream.”

I wonder if Andrew will be shouting and screaming about the placement of the teddy bear in the movie – or maybe he’ll be slightly more concerned with his portrayal, how stupid and pompous and totally oblivious he looks during the interview that would change his life forever. The reenactment of him walking in the park with Jeffrey Epstein, establishing once again that he sidled up to a sex trafficker and predator seemingly without remorse. And whatever else they’ll reveal about this buffoon in the film, because this is not revision of history; he did sit down with Emily Maitlis; he did talk astonishingly about his malfunctioned sweat glands; he did insist telling her about his “alibi”, going to the Pizza Express in Woking, as proof that he could not have engaged in sex trafficking with Virginia Giuffre – all of which subjected him to endless ridicule and mockery. That was ALL him. We saw it in its authentic form, and now we’re getting the dramatisation, with a Show Your Work focus. 

 

Not HIS work, obviously, because he doesn’t know what the f-ck that means, but the journalists, how they made this happen, the pressure they faced, the risk they were taking. We already know the ending but now we get to relive it all over again – and the best part is… so does HE.