“These women exist in real life,” says Anderson, who plays Emily Maitlis, “and they are women in a field that has been traditionally male-dominated [broadcast journalism]. Having a story about their experience and having journalists like Emily Maitlis represented in film is important. What I love about this film is that all of the women sit prominently in the story – you see them all working together to bring this interview to light.”

If Scoop shows how the Prince Andrew interview happened, it also offers answers to the second great question that the Newsnight special left hanging: why did he do it? The film leaves the viewer to their conclusions, but Sam McAlister (an expert, of course, in why people will and won’t go on camera) has her own theories.

“I think it’s two things. First of all, no one thinks they’re going to do a bad interview. Secondly, there is an ego element to interviews. Many powerful people think that not only are they not going to do a bad interview, but they’re probably going to do an excellent one.

“In his very difficult position, my impression is that he felt he would be able to eradicate the perception of him that had built up over the Epstein scandal by doing this interview.”

If both McAlister and Maitlis come out of Scoop looking resplendent, even Prince Andrew’s private secretary at the time Amanda Thirsk – played by Keeley Hawes – gets a fair hearing. Although she is shown as instrumental in the meetings and emails that led to the disastrous interview for her boss, she is neither an idiot nor a patsy.

According to Sam McAlister, who worked closely with Thirsk throughout: “Andrew let her down.”

“Amanda is an extremely intelligent, competent, capable, brilliant woman; I have nothing but praise for her. She was nobody’s fool. She was not a pushover.

“But she did believe in Andrew, as many people do about their bosses. And that belief turned out to be misplaced in terms of his answers.”

What I love about this film is that all of the women sit prominently in the story.

Gillian Anderson, who plays Emily Maitlis

It was left to Rufus Sewell to provide those unforgettable responses.

“I had a strong take on what I thought was going on with him,” says Sewell. “I’ve made my own personal decisions and judgments which I will keep to myself. But as far as I was concerned, I just had to not think about how it would be received because the danger is people are either going to say that it’s one-sided in terms of favouring him, or having too much sympathy, or vice versa. You can’t think about that.”

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Pushed on why he thinks Andrew chose to do the interview at all, Sewell says: “I think he feels a genuine sense of victimhood, and how not fair everything is, which is quite palpable. It’s also a very, very limited imagination as to the humanity of other people.

“I think he has enormous compassion and sympathy … for himself. He honestly felt, I think, that the interview could be a silver bullet to make people understand the real him.”

As Scoop shows, people did indeed come out of the interview with a much greater understanding of the real Prince Andrew. It was just not the one he wanted.

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