Netflix’s Scoop—the new Philip Martin-directed thriller that tells the true story behind Prince Andrew’s history-making Newsnight interview—is jam-packed with jaw-dropping moments, from the paparazzi Jae Donnelly’s sprint through Central Park to capture a front page-worthy shot of the Duke of York deep in conversation with Jeffrey Epstein, to literally every single thing said in the royal career-ending tête-à-tête itself. Many of them are easily verifiable but, as we’re told in the film’s opening credits, some of the real events presented have, of course, been fictionalized to a degree for dramatic purposes.
As a result, I left the film with a number of burning questions: in the immediate aftermath of the interview, did the Prince and his aides really think that it’d gone well? (Apparently, yes—so much so that the royal then offered to give the Newsnight team a tour of the palace and asked them if they wanted to stay behind to join his team’s weekly movie night.) And did the Queen actually sign off on her son’s participation? (Both interviewer Emily Maitlis and the editor of Newsnight, Esme Wren, said she had, though palace insiders later told The Telegraph that the Queen was “aware” of the interview, but did not specifically “approve” it.)
However, the most pressing question I had was about something else entirely: was Prince Andrew, I wondered, really that obsessed with teddy bears? In an early scene in Scoop, we see the frustrated Duke of York berating one of his maids (played, funnily enough, by Kate Winslet’s daughter, Mia Threapleton) for not organizing the cuddly toys on his bed correctly. It’s an odd moment and, on initial viewing, felt like a bizarre invention designed to play up Prince Andrew’s, er, eccentricities. Except, it’s not—it’s based on the truth.
In 2022, Charlotte Briggs, a former Buckingham Palace maid told The Sun that she had been responsible for laying out the Prince’s 72 soft toys in order of size every morning in the mid-’90s (when the Duke would’ve been in his mid-30s). “As soon as I got the job, I was told about the teddies and it was drilled into me how he wanted them,” she said. “I even had a day’s training. It was so peculiar. After all, he was a grown man who had served in the Falklands. Each had to be carefully positioned. They were old-fashioned teddy bears—the Steiff ones—and nearly all of them had sailor suits on and hats. It took me half an hour to arrange them. Then at bedtime, I had to take all the teddies off and arrange them around the room. They each had a set place. We had to stack the smaller ones in an unused fireplace, again in size order, to make them look pretty. His two favorite bears sat on two thrones either side of the bed. The others would sit at the foot of the bed on the floor.” If this was done incorrectly, she recalled, the Prince would lose his temper.