\n<\/p>\n
Before filming started on \u201cScoop,\u201d a Netflix feature about Prince Andrew\u2019s notoriously misjudged 2019 interview on the BBC, the actor Rufus Sewell, who stars as the disgraced royal, turned up on set to shoot a few photographs that would appear in the background. Loaded with makeup and prosthetics, including false teeth and a feathery wig, Sewell felt leaden and self-conscious, he said, fearful that his impersonation would slip into parody.<\/p>\n
Then, he recalled, he sat down opposite an elderly man working as an extra. Had they worked together before, the man asked Sewell; he looked vaguely familiar. \u201cNo,\u201d Sewell told him, \u201cbut obviously I wouldn\u2019t have looked like this.\u201d The man seemed confused, and was even more bewildered when Sewell explained, \u201cThis isn\u2019t my real face.\u201d The extra laughed: \u201cWhat do you mean<\/em> it\u2019s not your face?\u201d<\/p>\n This interaction, though strange, was very helpful, Sewell said in a recent video interview. \u201cI realized that it wasn\u2019t about passing for Andrew,\u201d he added. Instead, the man \u201chadn\u2019t doubted for a second that I was a human \u2014 that I was a real person,\u201d Sewell said. \u201cThat gave me a real freedom and a lease on life.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Sewell\u2019s performance as Prince Andrew, who is also known as the Duke of York, is impressive, not so much because of the resemblance (which is, at times, striking), but because he slyly channels the spirit of the man who so horrified<\/a> the British public by seeming to justify his friendship with the financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Sewell avoids the typical pitfalls of playing a real person as a broad, exaggerated impersonation. His duke is a spasm of nervous tics and shifty glances, of unctuous charm and feigned candor. Watching the journalist Emily Maitlis (an excellent Gillian Anderson) walk in to conduct the interview wearing pants, he gawks at her and shouts, \u201cTrousers!\u201d It feels true to the Prince Andrew the public knows, however little viewers may not believe what the character says.<\/p>\n The actor said he was aware of the risks inherent to this type of role. \u201cI have a kind of nightmare version of the performance that I\u2019m giving that I run madly from,\u201d he said. \u201cIn my head it was this weskit-wearing prince regent, a parody, you know, that I was frightened of.\u201d The right performance, he added, was in \u201cthe uncanny valley between me and him.\u201d<\/p>\n Becoming the duke the right way, Sewell said, began with studying Andrew, \u201cwhich really was just obsessively watching and trying to get behind what I could see.\u201d Though he insists he is \u201cnot a natural mimic,\u201d he came to learn Andrew\u2019s interview at the most granular level, memorizing every stutter and every hesitation, scrutinizing them for some deeper meaning. \u201cI obsessed to the point of driving myself insane,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd then when I thought I\u2019d got it, I\u2019d watch the original again and be struck by something I\u2019d missed. That can go on forever.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The interview itself is notable for its apparent civility, even courteousness. The duke isn\u2019t grilled or antagonized; Maitlis isn\u2019t especially confrontational, simply giving her subject enough rope to hang himself.<\/p>\n The film\u2019s director, Philip Martin, noted that the interview \u201cdoesn\u2019t have that \u2018A Few Good Men<\/a>\u2019 or \u2018Frost\/Nixon<\/a>\u2019 moment where there\u2019s some factual smoking gun, or some line of dialogue that does it.\u201d Instead, he said, \u201cWe got a portrait of a person through the interview. That\u2019s why it\u2019s had the impact that it has.\u201d<\/p>\n Martin said that he brought the instincts he honed making documentaries to \u201cScoop,\u201d with the goal of making \u201ca kind of wildlife film, with people.\u201d The original interview was, in some ways, \u201ca character study,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n It was also an astonishingly far cry from the royal family\u2019s media-savvy approach of prior decades, and its longtime motto \u201cNever complain, never explain.\u201d Rather, the duke\u2019s BBC appearance is an hourlong exercise in complaining and explaining. In the film, the duke\u2019s private secretary, Amanda Thirsk (Keeley Hawes), urges the duke to speak to the BBC because she believes an open conversation will endear him to the British public. But the public is outraged.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Sewell said he saw all this as symptomatic of a kind of hereditary delusion in the royal family. Why would the duke, who is Queen Elizabeth II\u2019s second son, think it\u2019s OK to fraternize with Epstein? Because he likes Epstein. How could he possibly think people would believe such lame excuses? Because he thinks he\u2019s convincing, or else that people are stupid. \u201cHe\u2019s been lead to believe that he\u2019s shockingly inappropriate in a hilarious way, a lot of fun, naughty, sometimes just devastatingly handsome,\u201d Sewell said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The power of the BBC interview, Sewell said, came from Maitlis refusing to be charmed. \u201cHis mouth gets drier and drier. His breathing becomes labored under the bonhomie,\u201d Sewell said. \u201cAll you have to do is not play along, and he\u2019s gasping for air.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n