Earlier than filming began on “Scoop,” a Netflix function about Prince Andrew’s notoriously misjudged 2019 interview on the BBC, the actor Rufus Sewell, who stars because the disgraced royal, turned up on set to shoot a couple of pictures that would seem within the background. Loaded with make-up and prosthetics, together with false enamel and a feathery wig, Sewell felt leaden and self-conscious, he stated, fearful that his impersonation would slip into parody.
Then, he recalled, he sat down reverse an aged man working as an additional. Had they labored collectively earlier than, the person requested Sewell; he seemed vaguely acquainted. “No,” Sewell advised him, “however clearly I wouldn’t have seemed like this.” The person appeared confused, and was much more bewildered when Sewell defined, “This isn’t my actual face.” The additional laughed: “What do you imply it’s not your face?”
This interplay, although unusual, was very useful, Sewell stated in a latest video interview. “I spotted that it wasn’t about passing for Andrew,” he added. As a substitute, the person “hadn’t doubted for a second that I used to be a human — that I used to be an actual individual,” Sewell stated. “That gave me an actual freedom and a lease on life.”
Sewell’s efficiency as Prince Andrew, who’s also called the Duke of York, is spectacular, not a lot due to the resemblance (which is, at instances, hanging), however as a result of he slyly channels the spirit of the person who so horrified the British public by seeming to justify his friendship with the financier and convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Sewell avoids the everyday pitfalls of taking part in an actual individual as a broad, exaggerated impersonation. His duke is a spasm of nervous tics and shifty glances, of unctuous allure and feigned candor. Watching the journalist Emily Maitlis (a wonderful Gillian Anderson) stroll in to conduct the interview carrying pants, he gawks at her and shouts, “Trousers!” It feels true to the Prince Andrew the general public is aware of, nonetheless little viewers could not consider what the character says.
The actor stated he was conscious of the dangers inherent to this sort of position. “I’ve a sort of nightmare model of the efficiency that I’m giving that I run madly from,” he stated. “In my head it was this weskit-wearing prince regent, a parody, , that I used to be terrified of.” The appropriate efficiency, he added, was in “the uncanny valley between me and him.”
Changing into the duke the precise approach, Sewell stated, started with learning Andrew, “which actually was simply obsessively watching and making an attempt to get behind what I may see.” Although he insists he’s “not a pure mimic,” he got here to be taught Andrew’s interview on the most granular stage, memorizing each stutter and each hesitation, scrutinizing them for some deeper which means. “I obsessed to the purpose of driving myself insane,” he stated. “After which after I thought I’d obtained it, I’d watch the unique once more and be struck by one thing I’d missed. That may go on without end.”
The interview itself is notable for its obvious civility, even courteousness. The duke isn’t grilled or antagonized; Maitlis isn’t particularly confrontational, merely giving her topic sufficient rope to hold himself.
The movie’s director, Philip Martin, famous that the interview “doesn’t have that ‘A Few Good Males’ or ‘Frost/Nixon’ second the place there’s some factual smoking gun, or some line of dialogue that does it.” As a substitute, he stated, “We obtained a portrait of an individual by the interview. That’s why it’s had the impression that it has.”
Martin stated that he introduced the instincts he honed making documentaries to “Scoop,” with the aim of creating “a sort of wildlife movie, with individuals.” The unique interview was, in some methods, “a personality examine,” he stated.
It was additionally an astonishingly far cry from the royal household’s media-savvy method of prior many years, and its longtime motto “By no means complain, by no means clarify.” Reasonably, the duke’s BBC look is an hourlong train in complaining and explaining. Within the movie, the duke’s non-public secretary, Amanda Thirsk (Keeley Hawes), urges the duke to talk to the BBC as a result of she believes an open dialog will endear him to the British public. However the public is outraged.
Sewell stated he noticed all this as symptomatic of a sort of hereditary delusion within the royal household. Why would the duke, who’s Queen Elizabeth II’s second son, suppose it’s OK to fraternize with Epstein? As a result of he likes Epstein. How may he probably suppose individuals would consider such lame excuses? As a result of he thinks he’s convincing, or else that persons are silly. “He’s been led to consider that he’s shockingly inappropriate in a hilarious approach, loads of enjoyable, naughty, generally simply devastatingly good-looking,” Sewell stated.
The facility of the BBC interview, Sewell stated, got here from Maitlis refusing to be charmed. “His mouth will get drier and drier. His respiratory turns into labored underneath the bonhomie,” Sewell stated. “All you must do shouldn’t be play alongside, and he’s gasping for air.”
