Netflix‘s new drama Scoop reportedly features a shocking scene where Prince Andrew jokes about his ‘friend’ Jimmy Savile.
The movie – which releases April 5 – recreates the disgraced Royal’s car crash Newsnight interview about his association with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
According to The Sun Prince Andrew (played by Rufus Sewell) jokes: ‘I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with me and Epstein.
‘I was much better friends with Jimmy Savile.’
For decades Savile secretly prayed on hundreds of people of both sexes, many of them children, while also being a valued friend to the likes of King Charles, the then Prince of Wales, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
The publication reports that the film, which stars Gillian Anderson as Emily Maitlis and Bille Piper as Newsnight producer Sam McAlister, portrays the Duke of York as a ‘bumbling, deluded fool’.
Not only does he tell his staff off for not arranging his teddy bear collection correctly in another scene he emerges from the bath totally nude.
It comes after actor Rufus admitted he initially regretted accepting the role because it was out of his comfort zone.
The actor, 56, said he thought he could ‘get behind’ the part, but panicked when he was offered it and confessed he thought ‘what have I done?’
Rufus opened up while appearing on Good Morning Britain, where he detailed ‘obsessively watching the Newsnight interview for hours’.
Speaking on his thoughts after getting the role, hesaid: ‘I felt I could get behind it then afterwards, when I got the part, I was like “gosh what I have done?” I’m not a natural mimic.’
‘I obsessively watched the interview. I watched it at the time like everyone else, I was kind of transfixed for various reasons. Like most people I had my own judgements.
‘But doing it is a different thing and trying to put yourself in the position of someone like that and working out what their reasoning and justification in their own head might be. Because that’s what people do.
‘I obsessively watched the interview. I watched it at the time like everyone else, I was kind of transfixed for various reasons. Like most people I had my own judgements.
‘But doing it is a different thing and trying to put yourself in the position of someone like that and working out what their reasoning and justification in their own head might be. Because that’s what people do.
‘And I spent hours and hours everyday trying to work out what he was thinking. You could only ever guess. When there was a hesitation or a stutter, or a particular movement of the head – what was behind it?
‘So Gillian and I could play out our version of events.’
‘I thought about what people might say, they might accuse me of trying to make him look bad, trying to make him look good. That’s the danger of playing a real person.’
Rufus, who got engaged to his girlfriend Vivian Benitez in December, underwent a total image transformation to become Prince Andrew and he described the result as ‘the perfect blend between myself and him.’
Rufus said: ‘At one point there were eyelids on me and I look so much like him it was uncanny but then I couldn’t move my eyes properly and when you watch the interview so much of it is in the eyes.’
‘One of the reasons why I was so hesitant to take it was because I didn’t want to be seen as jumping on some bandwagon.
‘I just wanted to do a truthful representation of him and that includes good and bad. It’s to show the light and dark and we all have both. He is a human like everyone else.’
It is based on Scoops by Sam McAlister who is also known as the ‘Booker extraordinaire’ on Newsnight having successfully negotiated and secured the interview which quizzed the Duke about his friendship with the late-convicted sex offender Jeffery Epstein.
Emily discussed Virginia Giuffre‘s claims that she was forced to have sex with Andrew three times when she was 17 under the orders of Epstein.
The prince strongly denied the claims throughout the interview.
Scoop is released on Netflix April 5