Netflix’s Scoop—the brand 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 dash via Central Park to seize a entrance page-worthy shot of the Duke of York deep in dialog with Jeffrey Epstein, to actually each single factor stated within the royal career-ending tête-à-tête itself. A lot of them are simply verifiable however, as we’re informed within the movie’s opening credit, among the actual occasions offered have, in fact, been fictionalized to a level for dramatic functions.

Consequently, I left the movie with various burning questions: within the rapid aftermath of the interview, did the Prince and his aides actually assume that it’d gone properly? (Apparently, sure—a lot in order that the royal then provided to provide the Newsnight group a tour of the palace and requested them in the event that they wished to remain behind to affix his group’s weekly film evening.) And did the Queen truly log out on her son’s participation? (Each interviewer Emily Maitlis and the editor of Newsnight, Esme Wren, stated she had, although palace insiders later informed The Telegraph that the Queen was “conscious” of the interview, however didn’t particularly “approve” it.)

Nonetheless, probably the most urgent query I had was about one thing else totally: was Prince Andrew, I questioned, actually that obsessive about teddy bears? In an early scene in Scoop, we see the annoyed Duke of York berating considered one of his maids (performed, funnily sufficient, by Kate Winslet’s daughter, Mia Threapleton) for not organizing the cuddly toys on his mattress appropriately. It’s an odd second and, on preliminary viewing, felt like a weird invention designed to play up Prince Andrew’s, er, eccentricities. Besides, it’s not—it’s based mostly on the reality.

In 2022, Charlotte Briggs, a former Buckingham Palace maid informed The Solar that she had been accountable for laying out the Prince’s 72 gentle toys so as of measurement each morning within the mid-’90s (when the Duke would’ve been in his mid-30s). “As quickly as I received the job, I used to be informed concerning the teddies and it was drilled into me how he wished them,” she stated. “I even had a day’s coaching. It was so peculiar. In spite of everything, he was a grown man who had served within the Falklands. Every needed to be fastidiously positioned. They have been old school teddy bears—the Steiff ones—and practically all of them had sailor fits on and hats. It took me half an hour to rearrange them. Then at bedtime, I needed to take all of the teddies off and prepare them across the room. They every had a set place. We needed to stack the smaller ones in an unused fire, once more in measurement order, to make them look fairly. His two favourite bears sat on two thrones both facet of the mattress. The others would sit on the foot of the mattress on the ground.” If this was achieved incorrectly, she recalled, the Prince would lose his mood.