There is some suggestion that the working-class single mother McAlister is on the verge of being fired for speaking out of turn to her superiors – Anderson’s Maitlis remarks, with more than a hint of her Margaret Thatcher, “Poor Sam” as she watches her leave the BBC studios one evening – and the central narrative is that McAlister persuades her to do the interview, rather than, as in A Very Royal Scandal, the idea being driven by a crusading Maitlis.
Jeffrey Epstein
The figure looming over both dramas is, of course, the billionaire paedophile and sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein, whose dubious friendship with Andrew – and supposed introduction of the duke to Giuffre – sparked the whole affair off. In Scoop, Epstein is only depicted briefly, during his notorious walk in Central Park with Andrew in 2010; the scene that opens the show, shot and edited like a thriller, depicts Connor Swindells’ intrepid photographer Jae Donnelly racing to get the famous picture of the two men together, thereby proving that Andrew and Epstein’s friendship had continued long after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for sexual offences.
Although the incident is shown in A Very Royal Scandal, Donnelly does not appear. Instead, Epstein himself features as a character, in a chilling, fictionalised scene in which Andrew approaches him cap-in-hand to ask for money to pay off Fergie’s debts. Epstein obliges and offers him the cash as a gift – “It’s done” – but in return, he “suggests” that Andrew remain as his guest in his New York mansion for several days, with a view to meeting many of Epstein’s influential friends and supporters. The content of that scene is from the imagination of writer Jeremy Brock, but the implication is that Andrew was both too stupid and too venal to extricate himself from Epstein’s malign web of influence, and that this ended up being the central plank of his downfall.