Gillian Anderson initially turned down the opportunity to play journalist Emily Maitlis in Scoop because she was “scared”.

The X-Files star had reservations about playing the former BBC Newsnight journalist in the upcoming Netflix movie about her infamous interview with Prince Andrew in 2019.

“It was just too scary to play Emily Maitlis, because she’s still living, because she’s so formidable, because people know her so well,” she explained to BBC News.

However, the Sex Education actress pushed through her fears and accepted the part, adding, “I thought I probably do have to do it because I’m so scared of it.”

Anderson was unable to speak with Maitlis to prepare for the role because the journalist is executive producing an upcoming miniseries, A Very Royal Scandal, about the same interview. However, they bumped into each other at a charity event last year and the actress “behaved with her as if I knew her. As if we were best friends”.

As part of her preparation, Anderson listened to the audio of the interview on repeat and learned it by heart so she could shoot a 10-minute section with her co-star Rufus Sewell.

“It felt like a play,” she recalled. “Because he had prepared in the same way and could go from beginning to end, it meant we could do those 10 minutes straight.

“We just fell into the rhythm of the interview and how those questions were asked. We took a breath afterwards and went, ‘That was it!’ It was fun. It was scary. It was amazing. It was weird.”

In the famous interview, the royal addressed his friendship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and denied that he had sex with a teenage girl.

Scoop will premiere on Netflix on Friday 5 April.

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