Rufus Sewell and Keeley Hawes have, perhaps, an unenviably delicate balance to strike when it comes to talking about their involvement with Scoop, the Netflix adaptation of Prince Andrew’s disastrous Newsnight interview.

The Duke of York’s televised sit-down with former BBC journalist Emily Maitlis in 2019, where she probed him about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, ended up signalling the end of his public life as a working royal.

Less than five years later and we already have a star-studded film version of events, with an impressively transformed Sewell as Andrew, Gillian Anderson as Maitlis and Billie Piper as Sam McAlister, the booker-turned-producer who clinched the fated opportunity.

When we talk, Sewell is conducting a round of interviews with Hawes, who plays Andrew’s former private secretary Amanda Thirsk, the aide who led his Pitch@Palace entrepreneurship venture and is believed to have encouraged him to accept the Newsnight offer.

Considering the sensitive and also sensational nature of their work, the pair appear relaxed and chattier than expected – and I haven’t been sent a long list of ‘don’t asks’ prior to the interview. Which would have rather stifled the conversation in this instance.

They take most of my questions in their stride and there’s a clear sense they’ve put significant thought into their preparation for both the project and its inevitable publicity drive.

There’s candour – perhaps well-crafted – from Sewell as he delves into the challenges of playing such a divisive figure, and never a feeling that he’s intent on fobbing me off with the same brief, well-rehearsed answers as everyone else. Maybe he’s just that good an actor.

However, the well-established film and TV star, thanks to the likes of A Knight’s Tale, The Holiday and Netflix political drama The Diplomat, was very aware of the big temptation he didn’t want to fall prey to in his portrayal of Andrew.

As a priority, the 56-year-old wants to represent any character he plays ‘fairly’.

‘That means, for me, the biggest challenge was resisting the temptation to slant one way or another,’ he reveals of starring as Prince Andrew. ‘Because you can be, depending on how much you think about it – one could be accused if one goes a certain way, of trying to put a character forward in a positive way, or to put them forward in a negative way. And especially when there’s pro-royal, there’s anti-royal – there’s all these things.

‘In the middle of it is a human being and humans are a strange mixture, [in] that people who do good things can be unpleasant. People who are nice can be evil. People who do terrible things can do good things. And people who do great things can occasionally do bad. It’s mixed up.’

Sewell endeavoured to ‘put everything, as I saw it, in there, including uncomfortable levels of positivity as well as negativity’.

That meant a lot of time studying the Newsnight interview, as well as the plethora of other footage available of the prince from across his life.

‘We have our modern idea of Andrew, knowing what we know. And then there’s the Andrew that I would watch, footage of him when he was being genuinely charming and likable.’

The truth of Andrew as a person, the star is insistent, is a mixture of all of those things, ‘aside from culpability or otherwise’.

‘And you do what you do, whoever you’re playing,’ chimes in Hawes. ‘And then of course, there’s the editor’s version!’ she adds, making them both laugh. ‘So you never have full control.’

‘Exactly. You can just try to be true to your instincts,’ agrees Sewell.

For Hawes, 48, a Bafta-winning star from Line of Duty, Ashes to Ashes and Spooks among many other credits, her biggest obstacle in playing loyal royal employee Thirsk was how ‘very little’ was available about her online.

‘On the one hand, that was a difficult part, and on the other, that was quite luxurious compared to what everybody else had to go through, that I was able to sort of create something of my own in Amanda.’

A particular amount of pressure comes with playing real people – alongside all their baggage – especially when they’re both still alive. When I ask the actors if they’ve heard from either person’s camp about their portrayal – or if they’re concerned about them watching their performances – there’s a slightly awkward silence before they both break into laughter again.

It’s the first time I get the sense of them proceeding especially carefully with how they word their answers.

Sewell goes back to his first reaction to the script – ‘I thought, “Oh, I feel I can do this.” And then I started thinking about it and, I thought, “Wow, this is a lot, you know, why did I say yes to this?” All of those things are in your head, of course.’

Hawes comes closer to the meat of my question in her answer, even if she does drop in volume as she selects her phrasing.

‘Obviously they’re aware there is so much of this in the public domain, this is a story that we’re allowed to tell,’ she begins. ‘And yeah, it’s always difficult showing real people, living or dead, because even if they’re no longer with us, their families are, you have responsibility to someone.’

Sewell backs up her point on mentioning the family – Andrew was famously – reportedly – joined by daughter Princess Beatrice in face-to-face negotiations between his office and the Newsnight team, with Scoop including that scene as well.

As Sewell grasps for the right word after beginning to say that ‘you feel a certain…’, Hawes steps in to add: ‘It has an effect. So yes, you’re conscious of it. But this is a story that we are all aware of, so…’

She then trails off herself.

I ask Sewell if he learned anything about Andrew – the man said to have a 72-strong teddy bear collection on his bed, all present and correct in Scoop – that surprised him or endeared the late Queen’s son to him?

‘No, I think endearment is a word that I would always steer clear of – with any character,’ he states.

However, the Victoria star reveals he continued to struggle with the overarching clash in perception between how Andrew and his side felt the interview with Maitlis had gone, and how the public received it.

‘The big surprise for me was that once you’ve got your head around the fact that they thought it might be a good idea, and I thought I’d settled that one in my head, [it was] why he’d actually been through that process that we all saw, and thought that it had gone well?’

Sewell acknowledges that ‘often the thorniest questions are the most important to answer’.

‘The things that you’d rather scoot over are the things you have to nail down, why they thought it had gone well. That was the biggest surprise to me.’

For all of Scoop’s darker and more weighty material, the screenplay by Peter Moffat – adapted from McAlister’s book Scoops: Behind the Scenes of the BBC’s Most Shocking Interviews – allows room for some moments of levity thanks to its cast’s light touch.

This ranges from the oddly childish way in which Andrew points and comments on Maitlis wearing trousers for their interview to the audience likely seeing more than they bargained for when the prince heaves himself out of the bathtub while Newsnight is airing.

I bring up an old interview Sewell did in which he claimed he felt comedy was something he has the chops for – but doesn’t necessarily get the corresponding opportunity.

How did he embrace comedy for this role – because it certainly feels as though he did?

‘Well, I always do. I mean, my mind always works the same way with – that’s something I said a long time ago, but I haven’t worried about that for a long time because I always know what the gag is, you know what I mean? Just in the actor’s sense of the word, meaning what the point – where the truth of the moment is.’

He also praises the tone of the script in helping – as well as an unexpected comedy inspiration that sprang out at him when examining Andrew’s Newsnight performance.

‘To be perfectly honest, watching the interview over and over again, one does get shades of David Brent watching him, in terms of the mismatch between his idea of what he is, his desired outcomes in the mind of the viewer, and the disparity between that and the effect he actually creates, is very…’

He chuckles as he ponders how to finish his thought. ‘It’s hard to tear yourself away from.’

‘But rather than try to go for laughs, if you get it accurately – sometimes it’s a mixture between a discomfort watching it,’ he adds.

Hawes picks up the conversation on Scoop’s ‘unexpected’ lighter moments – ‘whether that comes from shock or embarrassment or whatever it comes from, as a viewer’.

‘I was pleasantly – you know, some of this is very heavy – and so those lighter moments ping through in a way that when I read the script, I didn’t see them, and they come from performances and moments. They’re quite welcome, I think,’ she proffers.

‘I think the actual tone of the film itself makes a better case for it than anything I could say,’ argues Sewell. ‘Because it’s actually a difficult thing to talk about, without certain words ringing out and seeming inappropriate, considering the weight of the matter at hand.’

‘But actually, totally, the line it walks I think is perfect, but it’s very difficult to walk that line in an interview,’ he observes, with a hint of a rueful smile.

Scoop streams exclusively on Netflix from Friday, April 5.

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