“The interview itself has not only a serious side to it, but also a surreal side to it,” said Philip Martin. <\/p>
New Netflix film Scoop<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n The interview \u2013 about Prince Andrew\u2019s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein \u2013 saw the royal offer a series of bizarre responses to Emily Maitlis\u2019s questions, including references to a Pizza Express in Woking and his supposed inability to sweat.<\/p>\n Those responses, unsurprisingly, led to a great deal of ridicule on social media, something which is heavily referenced in the film.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p> \u201cI think that one of the things that we all tried to do was to to balance both those sides of the story,\u201d Martin told RadioTimes.com<\/a> during an exclusive interview.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a very serious story in many ways, but it\u2019s also inadvertently a funny story. And I think that sometimes films can present you with a binary choice: \u2018This is a serious film, it\u2019s all serious\u2019, or \u2018This is a funny film, it\u2019s all funny.’\u201d<\/p>\n He continued: \u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n He added: \u201cBut 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\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s there in the script, it\u2019s there in the writing. But it\u2019s also\u2026 we tried to put it there into the film. And social media, the world that Andrew\u2019s interview comes out into is like that, I think. It\u2019s very, you know\u2026 it\u2019s a world of multiple opinions.\u201d<\/p>\n Scoop stars Rufus Sewell as Prince Andrew, Gillian Anderson as Emily Maitlis and Billie Piper as Sam McAlister \u2013 the former Newsnight guest booker who secured the interview and from whose perspective the film is told.<\/p>\n\n