Sam McAlister - The Interview that Changed Everything

Sam McAlister was the producer who secured the now-infamous Prince Andrew interview for Newsnight.  Within hours of it being shown, Sam moved from anonymity to global recognition. Her book Scoops and its Netflix adaptation turned the architect of the story into part of the story itself.

In this episode of The Price of Fame, in conversation with broadcast journalist Jon Briggs (the original UK voice of Siri), Sam reflects on the true cost of swapping the freedom of being an “invisible” producer for the strange reality of being portrayed on screen by Billie Piper., This is what happens when the spotlight turns your way.

Because sometimes the biggest story is what happens after the broadcast ends.

Sam McAlister is a visiting senior fellow at LSE and in high demand as a keynote speaker globally. 

This podcast is also available in vision here: https://www.youtube.com/@ThePriceofFameVodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Hello and welcome to the Price of Fame. For years my guest worked in the shadows. She wasn't the one under the studio lights. She was the one persuading people to sit in those studio lights, negotiating terms, sensing weaknesses, judging the precise moment when a conversation might tip from polite to historic. Her book Scoops and its film adaptation, the singular scoop, moved her from behind the camera to somewhat much more visible. The architect of exposure became part of the story, and the repercussions of that particular interview are still being felt very recently and very publicly, which is a reminder that sometimes those moments don't end when the credits roll. Today we're not replaying headlines, we're asking something quieter and perhaps a bit more complicated. What does it cost to create a moment that alters someone's public life? And what happens when the spotlight swivels and settles on you? Sam McAllister. Welcome to the Price of Fame.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Thank you for having me, John.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

When did you first become aware of the power of public recognition?

SPEAKER_00 1:15

I think probably it was on the tube in London where I live the day after the interview had aired. And my picture had been featured in The Daily Mail first and The Guardian. But there was an article in the Metro and the paper here in London, and someone was reading it next to me on the underground. And they did that kind of weird filmic thing that you don't think actually happens in real life, but did this one time, where they kind of look at the picture and they kind of look at me and I look back, and this has never happened to me before, so I have no precedent for dealing with it. So they kind of pointed at it and I kind of nodded, and then they kind of gave me a thumbs up, and then they got off the tube and went on their way. And that was probably the first moment where someone interacted with me in public with my new why list status.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

So, of course, we are talking about the interview with Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, as he is now known. But let me take you back a little bit just before all of that becomes public reality. Because a producer is about being behind the scenes. Did you enjoy the invisibility? Was there a bit of you that went, actually, I quite like the Emily Maitless role, to be honest?

SPEAKER_00 2:28

I've been, like I have friends who've said to me for years, why don't you do the in front of the camera stuff, the Emily Maitless role in a sense, but it's never interested me. And actually, ironically, the reason it's never interested me, obviously the money would be nice, it's ten times a producer's salary. But I love, I loved, I loved being invisible. I think there's such a freedom to dealing with people when they have no idea who you are. You're a beautiful nobody, there's no precedent, there's no Google search, there's nothing out there in the public domain. You have a clean slate. And when you're doing negotiation in a news program, that's actually an incredibly useful trait to have. And when you interact with people, you get to interact with them freely. They don't know anything about you, they don't have a kind of like a backlog of information on you. So it allowed me to roam free in my job. It allowed me to roam free in the echelons of power without being part of power. But it did also mean obviously I couldn't afford expensive cars and expensive holidays, and I didn't really mind one jot.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Did you feel that you had responsibility in shaping other people's reputations?

SPEAKER_00 3:38

Well, you do. You have the responsibility to be honest with them with what's on offer. But in truth, they have the responsibility for shaping their own reputation when they give answers to the questions that are asked on a program like Newsnight. So as long as you've told them the truth, the truth is you will be asked questions about things we're interested in, not just the things that you want to talk about. That's how it works. And if you can give good answers, then good on you. If you can give boring answers, good on you. And if things go wrong, then I'm afraid that's the responsibility of being a person with public profile or a politician, or indeed a prince or former prince, as the case may be.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

I'm assuming that that interview went out, and it was pats on the back all round for a hell of a scoop for Newsnight and the staff, and particularly yourself, because I know you fought very hard for that interview, and it wasn't just ringing somebody up and saying, Prince Andrew, do you fancy tank talking about you know XYZ? It was a very long involved negotiation, as anyone who's read the book or watched the film will know. But when or how long did it take before you realized that this was something that wasn't just going to change his life, it was going to change yours as well.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

It took quite a while, to be honest. I mean, initially there was the kind of you know buzz the day after my picture in the paper, a terrible picture from LinkedIn, because obviously I never knew that the mail were going to be using it in an article about my work. And then the buzz of the telephone, the relentless clamour for content. So, in a sense, the pivot began at that stage, the pivot from being the person reporting to being the person reported on. And the day after the interview went out, it was a Sunday. I basically didn't leave my house. It was dark, it was November, I didn't turn the lights on, and the day kind of descended around me with my phone on fire because there's no infrastructure when you're a producer, you know, there's no agent, there's no, I didn't have a husband at home or something. I've got kind of like a 12-year-old child who's, you know, not a ton of use in this scenario. So other than kind of turning off the lights and consuming a copious number of snacks, there wasn't really an infrastructure around me. So then it's Monday, go back to work. There's a lot of, you know, sort of praise, there's some jealousy, to be honest. That certainly felt like a pivot in terms of my professional situation. But it was quite a long time before there was, if you like, a spotlight on me, because understandably the spotlight falls on the presenter who's famous, the brilliant Emily Maitless. And that's the structure and the hierarchy, usually, of how production and producers and presenters work. So this was the unusual scenario.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

There's no there's no infrastructure around to look after you. No. What happened? Did you have to build it? Did you then have to approach people? Did other approach people approach you? Did you know who to trust in this sort of situation?

SPEAKER_00 6:42

It's a combination of things, actually, John. I mean, I've kind of learned on the job in a sense. I mean, w we are six years since the interview, but we're only four years since I left the BBC. And the two years in between those two, we had, you know, COVID, I would I was terribly, terribly sick, unfortunately, and obviously lots of other people didn't make it, it was a time of pure chaos. So the mechanisms around me became largely irrelevant because of the pandemic. But once that settled, and I kind of asked myself the question, gosh, you know, what is the legacy of this interview? And it was growing and growing. I needed to create a structure to feel at peace, in a sense, with what I felt I'd contributed to that moment in the history of the BBC, in the history of journalism, in the history of the royal family, and now, to be frank, with the arrest, in the history of the country. So it was a quite a protracted process. And eventually there was a tipping point at which I thought, I don't do bitter, I don't do angry, but I would like my name properly on this body of work. How do I achieve that? Can I achieve that by staying at the BBC? And the answer I came up with was a book. And it transpired I could not do that book while I remained at the BBC. So then I have a decision to make. Do I leave or do I stay? And obviously, speaking to you here today, we know what decision I made.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Indeed. So let's go to the interview itself, and then we'll talk a bit more about the aftermath. At the time, if you're to watch the film, you're sitting there in the room, and you you have the senior producer next to you, who's kind of watching the cameras and making sure that the sound's still okay, and so on. And there there are looks between the two of you. How much did you know about the sort of dynamite you were creating as you were watching the interview? Or was it just as most professional broadcasters will want to do? We need to get this in the bag, we need to make sure that we haven't missed anything, we need to make sure it's recorded, and then boy oh boy, we've got to get it on air.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Well, it's an interesting one because the role that I had as someone who negotiated the interviews, I often liken it to being like a surrogate. You spend months and months, uh, nine months usually gestation for a baby. In this case, it was 13 months gestation for a negotiation, and then you hand the baby to someone else. You hand it to the presenter, and you hand it to the executive producer, who in this case was Stuart McLean, who was the deputy editor at the time. Great guy, but he's now got all the pressure on him in a sense. I'm really the least kind of like fruit person in the room in one sense. And I think ultimately what was really interesting about that process is at that stage you're just sitting there taking it all in. You're the only person who doesn't really have a job to do in the strict sense of the word. So what was extraordinary for me is that the negotiation on the Monday, we're now on Thursday, just for clarity, the final negotiation, face to face with Prince Andrew and his surprise guest, his daughter, Princess Beatrice, quite a curveball. In that negotiation, he had said many of the things that he said on camera on that Thursday. But the real thing that was extraordinary to me, because I'd heard them all on Monday, the thing that was extraordinary was that in that interim period, it hadn't been, in a sense, flogged out of him to say them on camera. And as the cameras rolled, sometimes there's that moment where someone's eyes kind of light up and you feel that they forget everything that they were meant to say, which probably would have been some kind of carefully curated apology. And instead, they mention the Pizza Express in Woking. They mention the temporary condition in which allegedly they couldn't sweat. They mention the straightforward shooting weekend. And they talk about how Jeffrey Epstein wasn't quite as bad as you know everyone says. That was the gist of the thrust of what he was saying. So my shock, in a sense, was that he was saying that on camera so the world could hear.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Clearly, the things that were said in that interview hit the press and everyone knew about it, and it made a sensational few weeks as people were talking about it. What you weren't to know at the time of recording, of course, was that here we are, so many years later, still feeling directly the repercussions, witnessing the repercussions of that hour, hour and a half spent in his company. How do you feel emotionally, for example, when you see the latest revelation, the removal of the titles, the removal of where he's living, and the possibility, well, the arrest itself. What's your emotional feeling at that point?

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Yeah, I mean, it's been a roller coaster, but I take a very strong dose of self-reflection and self-control. I am not the story here. I know it feels like I am in a sense because of the book and the movie, but the real story here is power and damage to young women. And in a sense, we're just the conduits through which that incredibly important legacy of individuals like Virginia Dufrey, who's sadly no longer with us, who made those initial allegations against Andrew, which he still, to be very clear, fervently denies. But there are many others in this story, far more important than me, who've made terrible sacrifices in terms of personal pain and in terms of effort and lawyers and infrastructures. And so, really, what I try to do is to temper my reactions because it has been a roller coaster to imagine that a piece of work you did as, in a sense, a nobody producer, working part-time, loving their job, you know, respecting the BBC, trying to work hard, trying to feed their kid. Now you've been played by Billy Piper in a movie, and then the next minute you get an update on your phone that something of the work that you were a part of means that a member of the royal family has been arrested for a you know, a possible kind of like a possible charge, who knows what will happen. It's an extraordinary situation. So you do have to keep yourself in check. You have to remind yourself the story isn't about you. It is in one sense, but in the grand scheme of things, it's about far more important ideals. And so I think that helps me from not going completely crazy over this very, very volatile roller coaster ride that I have been on.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

I I I put this question delicately because I think I know what the answer will probably be. But is there any point in in the full panoply of how this has panned out where you felt any form of responsibility for the outcome, the various things that have happened?

SPEAKER_00 13:34

No. I think that the thing about journalism that's done with integrity, which NewsNight largely always delivers, we all make mistakes, sometimes things go wrong, you know, we put our hands up, we should when they do, is that when you have delivered with integrity the opportunity for a member of the royal family to give an explanation for himself in extremely difficult circumstances, and that opportunity is afforded to him fairly and openly and robustly as it was, there's nothing that I feel in terms of regret in terms of my behaviour or responsibility. The responsibility then falls to him, as it did, to acquit himself in a way that means that he does well, badly, middling, who knows how it will go. And very unfortunately, obviously for him, it went extremely badly. We played by the books, we were fair, there was nothing that he misunderstood, there were no kind of like gotcha moments. This was old school, old-fashioned negotiation, fair journalism, and a fair opportunity to give an account of yourself. And unfortunately for him, it went very badly.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

The person who appears in the film, who you one might have a modicum of uh of feeling towards, is of course Amanda Thirsk, who is Andrew's private secretary. Do you have any sympathy for her, or was that just something that the guidance was not necessarily followed well or indeed thought about with any great careful detail around it?

SPEAKER_00 15:07

So Amanda and I became friends. I I find that quite an extraordinary sentence, and I think it gives you an idea of the caliber of the woman. To imagine that this person comes into your life as I did with her, we spent many months talking, we met a number of times, we stayed in communication, we went for drinks after this happened, we stayed in touch. To imagine the calibre of her character, that despite the fact that she lost her job as a result of this, that we remained in touch, I think gives you an idea of the mutual respect of the people that are not the principal. It's much easier being, in a sense, the prince or the presenter because of the infrastructure and the protections you're afforded. It's much more vulnerable to be the second in command, as she was, or the 22nd in command, if even that, that I was at Newsnight. Because you know when things go wrong, John, that the principal is probably going to be okay. At the very worst, they may, you know, eventually be charged with an offence in this case, if that happens for him. But ultimately, it's usually the second or the 22nd in command who takes the fall. And she took a very robust and generous view on that. And that's why we managed to stay in touch. So I have nothing but time for Amanda. She has never done anything vitriolic or malevolent towards me. She has never caused me any difficulty. She has never briefed against me. You know, she has treated me with generosity and pure class. So, in a sense, it's the opposite response. Uh, you know, he was a bomb waiting to go off. She was trying to assist with the shrapnel, that was her job. She did it to the best of her abilities. That didn't work out for her. And I'm very grateful to her that she has such class that she's never caused me any personal difficulty or anything of that kind.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Let's talk about how you then went on to handle the growing publicity around all of this. You sat down and produced the book, didn't you? I did. How was that? Was it a cathartic experience? How did it feel moving from behind the camera to being the person who was the subject of the attention?

SPEAKER_00 17:11

Yes, I mean the book, in a sense, was the door that opened all of that. And of course, I had to leave to write it. And so it was a massive risk. And I think really with the book, it was a thing for me that I never for a moment thought that it would become what it became. I mean, over my shoulder you can see the poster from the Netflix movie that was based on my book, Scoop, you know, where I'm played by Billy Piper. I mean, that sounds demented as a sentence. And at this juncture, of course, I never would have envisaged it. I just envisaged that if someone asked the question in the future, oh, how did that interview happen? Somewhere in a dusty library, a book probably purchased just by my mum and my closest friends. And I also kind of thought I could leave a copy for my son. My ambitions were quite small. It was a possible student in the future who wants to know how the interview happened, a journalism student, probably with a very niche interest, maybe like, you know, in a in a hundred years' time, my child and my mother, in a sense, that was all I was thinking about.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

But that's very self-effacing, and I understand that, because you're you're not a shout it from the rooftop sort of person. But but this you kind of knew what the public response had been to what they'd seen on screen. You must have had some kind of inkling that once you started explaining how this process had happened and what had gone on behind the scenes, people would latch on to it, surely.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

I think it's I think yes and no. I mean, I know what news is, so I knew how to pitch the idea of the book. And I remember pitching the book because I'm used to being brief. And the pitch was something on the lines of how on earth did the Prince Andrew interview happen? I'm the only person in the world who can tell you. That was the top line for the agents. So I think I said that.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

That sounds like a pretty good pitch to me, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 19:00

Not bad, right? But I don't know anyone, John. You know, I've never dealt with an agent, you know, I've never written a book, I've only written a legal opinion because I used to be a barrister, you know, or a script here and there when I used to be sort of on screen or behind the scenes. So I sent it to six people, five reply. So that's pretty good. One replied eventually, I think it had gone to spam. But that's a pretty good return. And then I speak to all the people that have replied, and by a miracle, because there is no money in a nobody with no real social media presence. The money in books is not made from litigation-heavy books written by someone who doesn't have any profile. It takes a really brave agent, my agent Sarah Ballard, it takes a really brave publisher, Cecilia Stein at one world, to take on that risk because it's not gonna make them a lot of money. It's just not gonna happen, right? And Netflix deals a whole completely different thing. So at that stage, I thought, okay, I just want to tell my story. That felt like that was an important thing to do. You cannot control how people are gonna react to that. I knew it was a risk that this could be a big problem for me. Would I be employable? Would people ever want to work with me again? Would I be able to pick up a phone if I had a profile? Did I take away the majesty of being a nobody that allowed me to move without people knowing anything about me? So it was a risk and I had no real way of predicting how people would react to it. It could have been a terrible, terrible idea and a terrible move, but had to give it a shot.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Was it the book or was it the Netflix movie that really made this explode?

SPEAKER_00 20:37

I think it was a bit of both, with the book, because it was the first time I'd spoken on the record, really, because the BBC, understandably, because of the way its hierarchies work, you know, the focus when interviews came in were understandably on Emily, who's brilliant. I'm not disparaging her in any way. But when I was offered opportunities to, you know, be in glossy magazines or do things that were beyond the wildest dreams of someone part-time bringing up a kid on their own on a single salary, I mean, I I couldn't do them. And there's no bitterness or rancor, but what it meant is that I had a network because I'd always behave very respectfully and very well when dealing with other broadcasters and journalists. So when I had a book coming out, you know, I can ring up someone at the Lorraine show and say, I've got a book coming out, can I come on? I know the people at this morning. Equally, I know people at the spectator or the guardian or the telegraph or the mail. You know, I don't really have enemies outside the building. Enemies in the building are different matter, but outside the building, no. So it really was, I suppose, the first time I remember sitting on this morning, and it was back when it was uh, you know, Philip and Holly, it's that long ago, and thinking, I've watched this program all my life, and now I'm on the sofa with two of the most well known presenters in the country, far greater known than anyone who's ever worked at News Night, rightly or wrongly. And that was a surreal moment, and I think that was the biggest. Beginning in a sense of having a profile of any profound kind. And of course, that's times by a thousand when you've got Billy Piper playing you in a Netflix movie.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

I'm going to come to the Billy Piper bit in in in just a second. When when the kind of offer comes in, Netflix going, Yeah, we want to turn this into a movie, what did you do? Do you run around the room excitedly, you know, going, Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, or do you just sit there and sit the next cafe latte going, well, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

Definitely not the latter. And from what I remember rightly, I received the call when I was in the kitchen. My kitchen has cobwebs, it needs a repaint. You know, it's like something from a million years ago. I've never really had the funds to be able to do anything about that. It still looks exactly the same right now. But I remember I did scream down the phone. And then when I put the phone down from the producer, Hillary Salmon, who was the production company that I was working with at that juncture, another guy called Sanjo Singal, who was the first person that got in touch with me, who used to work, ironically, at Newsnight and was told about me by someone called Jackie Long, who works at Channel 4 News. The book wasn't even out. No one even knew about it. It was word of mouth of people who were generous, and none of this would have happened without Jackie mentioning me to him. But, you know, once the phone goes down, John, I cried. I mean, wow, what a moment. And I realized what it's going to do for me.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

I I I know one shouldn't talk about money. I'm not going to ask you and I wouldn't expect you to tell me. But is it life-changing what what when when that sort of thing happens to you?

SPEAKER_00 23:27

For me, it was life-changing. Think I always, I mean, it's in the public domain that I was earning £30,000 a year because I was part-time and I was bringing out my son on my own. I would have a lodger. I'm not complaining. I know a lot of people in this country get by on on a lot less who do much more arduous jobs than I did. I'm very clear on that. However, factually, I think people think I'm a zillionaire, I'm not a zillionaire. They think I'm a millionaire, I'm not a millionaire. But when you've been getting by on that kind of money, I remember the first time I went for lunch and I had two courses. I bought my son a, I bought my son a smoothie and I bought myself one as well. And it's those small acts of being able to be a little bit more generous to myself that I hold completely dear. And I'm just so grateful like my phone broke, and instead of kind of like, you know, carrying on with it, I got a new phone. I don't want to have Ferraris. I want the freedom to be able to feed my child and get an extra smoothie. And that meant that I could do that. And for that I am eternally grateful.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

So, what is it like to watch yourself interpreted by an actor?

SPEAKER_00 24:37

It is bonkers, John. It's bonkers. I mean, it was less bonkers in a sense because obviously I'd spent the whole period. The making of the movie was, I say I'm an experienced billionaire, and it really is part of that incredible legacy of experience. So by the time the movie came out, I'd been working on that project for a year. So sitting down with a screenwriter, the incredible Peter Moffat, who'd just been working with Brian Cranston, goodness sake, on your honour, and now stuck with me in a Soho eatery talking about, you know, emails and WhatsApps and those kinds of things. To be in the process of meeting Gillian and Billy for the first time through the casting process, through the writing process, I was so heavily involved. They were so respectful to telling my story in a way that I was comfortable with. Having the costume designer come to my house, I don't have a wardrobe. So all my clothes are literally thrown on a chair, and this poor man's probably worked with Nicole Kidman, you know, and I'm like going through dusty clothes because I never got round to getting a wardrobe and I don't even have a clothes around. I mean, I'm an embarrassment to adult life. But my priorities were different. I was bringing out my son, you know, it was a different priority set. So by the time the movie comes out, it is crazy surreal, but many surreal things have happened in that year. I mean, Julian Anderson coming up to you and saying, Oh, it's lovely to meet you, isn't really on the bingo card. Billy Piper putting on a wig and, you know, asking you to explain how you walk, sending videos of your walk to Billy Piper whilst with your friend who's a professor at the London School of Economics. I mean, I have a surreal range of amazing things I get to do in my life. So when the movie came out, it was how our people are going to react. That's when you're kind of like in peril to that. But oh my gosh, the whole process was surreal and incredible. Pinch yourself blue every day.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

Does it feel flattering or is it exposing and unsettling?

SPEAKER_00 26:35

I think it feels very exposing conceptually, but because of the care that was taken by the people I was lucky enough to work with. The director, Philip Martin, who was so empathetic to me being like a real life person, I mean, Billy had never played a real life person. And very sadly, for a lot of actresses, many women they play are, you know, victims in some sense. This was a story of journalistic heroism, not heroism in general, to be clear, but journalistic heroism. And she said she wanted to make an unsung hero sing. And in a sense, the process was so respectful and generous to me. Of course, there were moments where we rubbed up against each other, not me and Billy to be clear. Never ever. She's incredible. But you know, there were moments that were tense for me because I am a someone that deals in fact and evidence, and now I'm dealing with drama. So I probably was a bit of a pain now and again when I was like, that would never happen. And then it's your identity. It is your identity. It's a really big deal.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

To have it not be you, I can understand why you go, no, no, no, no, no, I would never say that.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

Yeah, it's a really big deal. So Peter was very generous and patient with me. I remember there were there were moments where I would have three, I literally did it. I didn't tell them this because obviously it wouldn't be helpful. I would have three lines. There would be things that mattered to me, but I knew I should just not mention. In the middle, there would be things that really mattered to me, but should I bother mentioning? And then I'd be very disciplined on the things I would actually mention. What is like basically a complete red line? And I remember two in particular. There was one where originally there was kind of this idea that somehow I had a bit of a grudge against sort of Prince Andrew, who I'd never met. I know I had no grudge against because of something that had happened in my childhood. And I was like, I don't like that kind of woman as victim dynamic. And so that was removed straight away. There was a scene where I was throwing a phone in anger, and I was very clear that because of my financial circumstances, I would never ever throw a phone. And also because my child, my pretend child, was in the scene that to give the idea that I was the kind of parent that would do something like that in front of my child, I wouldn't even swear in front of him. So I was very on the line about that. And the third one, the most important of all, was in one of the final scenes they showed Billy Piper as me drinking a glass of wine. And I explained with great passion that I dislike wine and it had to be a martini. So I don't know where my priorities are, John, but those were three that I remember particularly.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

All Stalwart priorities, and I quite understand why, particularly the last one. Thank you. But again, you I assume you've watched the movie. Of course you have. Like hundred times, obviously. Yes, I mean it's regularly, you know, I know what I'm gonna do tonight, I should watch myself. But is that uncomfortable? I know a lot of people don't like watching themselves back, but this is this is a slightly almost you're removed from your own body experience, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 29:34

Yeah, I don't find it uncomfortable because I feel that I was very honest at the beginning. I said, look, if you show my full alpha nice, I'm not gonna be a heroic character. I mean, I can be an absolute pain. I wanted to be fair to the people that I worked with, so there'll be moments where you probably think, gosh, she's a bit of a pain to work with. I was quite mouthy as a character in the movie as I am in real life. But of course, it's just a snapshot of an entire life. So you have to crystallize, you know, conflict in the newsroom or traveling by bus and looking after, bringing up your child, your incredible mother who supports you unconditionally throughout your entire life, my mom Netta, who, you know, I owe everything to. So you have to take quite a robust view on it. I think I said to Billy, I want you to show two things. I want you to show my heart, because I have a lot of heart, you know. I'm a I'm trying to be a good person relentlessly. And also my walk. I have a very, as she would put it, iconic walk, a particular look, you know, the kind of bouncy I used to model a million years ago, and I have a very bouncy walk, and everyone knows me from my walk. So those two things felt important to me to give a legacy of I'm not perfect, no one is, I can be a pain, but I my heart is in the right place. I'm an underdog trying to live a good life, bring up my kid, do right by my job, do right by my mum, but with a very bouncy walk.

SPEAKER_01 30:53

So there is this character now, Sam McAllister, in the public domain. Yeah. What do you think the public think about you that might not actually be true?

SPEAKER_00 31:06

I think probably uh I've gotta be honest, the public have been largely 99% incredibly kind to me. I'm very grateful for the public reception I've received. It is not really a mixed bag. It is largely students stopping on the street saying, My gosh, you know, you make me want to be a journalist. It's relentless, very generous messages on LinkedIn or Instagram saying lovely things about the movie or about the work that I did and that the Newsnight team did. It really isn't that much nastiness. One of the reasons I think is because of the misconception, might be that I'm kind of like uh looking at the price of fame, that I am fame-hungry, quite the opposite. My privacy is of paramount importance. And so what I've tried to do is to make myself known for the one thing that I wanted to be known for, which was my part in this story, but not to turn myself into, in a sense, a famous person, going to those right parties, being seen in the right magazines, making other moves into areas that I have no expertise or experience in. So I have self-disciplined myself away from other opportunities, which people might be surprised to know because this wasn't about fame for me, actually. It was about credit and recognition of what I had done. I've achieved that in, you know, so many ways. I feel very grateful for that. But I'm not obsessed with myself and I have zero ego and that perhaps. Perhaps that doesn't come across always.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

So where does that self-discipline come from? Was it personal? Was it something you aligned yourself with, or were there those who advised you, Sam, look, when the spotlight's going to be on you, this is what you have to look out for?

SPEAKER_00 32:51

Well, I'm just basically a runner, I mean, I have amazing people around me in terms of agents and, you know, people who've supported me through this process. But ultimately, you have to ask yourself the question, what do you want your life to look like? And this opportunity has afforded me incredible opportunities in terms of experiences and being on a movie set and flying to, you know, LA for the Emmys and hanging out with Julian Anderson and Billy Piper, you know, and those are incredible experiences, but that is not my real life or the life that I'm looking to choose. I have been surrounded by famous people and powerful people all my life. I see the toll that that takes. Of course, there are huge financial benefits to it, but as long as, you know, I have more basic needs, my basic needs are being met. I can have that extra smoothie and I can turn on the lights now and again and not worry about it as much as I used to. I don't want the other things that come with that. I've never been interested in them. So I wanted this one-off incredible experience of each thing that I've done. The book, there was a Channel 4 documentary, the movie, I do speaking, which is in private. Uh, it's not in the public domain. I do a bit of broadcast here or there. I teach at the London School of Economics and I do some stuff with Cambridge, but I've never been interested in the brutal, the brutal truth of the lack of privacy, freedom, and indeed safety that many people who are in the public domain face. That is not something I am chasing or interested in in any way whatsoever.

SPEAKER_01 34:25

You talk about having worked with very famous people, and of course, you watch, don't you, these people and the public reaction around people whose images are very, very well known. So you clearly had an understanding of the pitfalls, the traps that can go with fame. But fame isn't always controllable, and you talk about it as if you've you you've had a very good reign on it and and it hasn't done anything you haven't wanted it to. Is that is that realistic? Is that true?

SPEAKER_00 34:55

No, that I I don't think no, that that wouldn't be how I would put it. But what I would say is that, you know, there's a point at which you can't control the animal, and I've been very fortunate. I didn't know whether or not I would be getting, you know, death threats and people sending me like terrible things. Largely that hasn't happened. So I feel very fortunate and very grateful that the public have taken this for what it is in the main, which is somebody who worked hard, who did something accidentally extraordinary, who's just telling her story, is minding her own business most of the rest of the time. I think ultimately, though, you can't control how other people react to you. So all I can control is my own behavior. I try very hard never to be vitriolic or difficult with people who send you, you know, strong messages or have issues with you. If people comment on my physicality or my public face or whatever, I don't, I don't respond or get upset about it. I never read the comments. I read more about other people. That's far more interesting, more fun. So having had friends who work in those worlds, you know, never read the comments was the piece of advice that most of my friends gave me the most. And it was also think about whether or not you want a life in the public eye, or as I am fortunate enough to have sporadic public eye. I can go to a bougie party now and again, but I can also walk down the street with no makeup, in, you know, kind of like horrible tatty shoes and an outfit that probably is like 10 years old, and no one's gonna take a photograph of that and sell it to a newspaper. So I feel I have a lovely middle ground where I'm free, I'm full of gratitude. I get to do some nice things now and again, but basically I'm just a, I said, a whileister, and that's a really, really happy place for me to be for me.

SPEAKER_01 36:39

You've negotiated fiercely on behalf of organizations, behalf of institutions. How hard is it to negotiate on behalf of yourself?

SPEAKER_00 36:48

I really enjoyed it. That's one of the things I enjoyed the most. I had in my mind that basically every decision that I make along this path is going to have, you know, profound implications for me. So I have to be very careful. The thing that I think I enjoyed the most was using some of my legal training. You know, my ambition here was to not get sued, which so far is so good. Actually, a really big deal for an individual such as myself who's not part of an institution. It's the royal family, it's the BBC. These are big, powerful, wealthy institutions with endless resources. So not getting sued, having as good a time as possible, leaving, you know, a legacy, having these incredible experiences, these are all negotiations. They're negotiations with entities, they're negotiations with yourself, they're negotiations with people you used to work with, they're negotiations with people you've just met. It's a relentless negotiation. And I've just tried to be very active in that, to not feel passive, to try and think about what I genuinely want, what actually matters to me. And at this point, you know, we're four years out of leaving the BBC. I've always been a very happy person, but now I'm very happy and very free. And freedom is my drug, John, not fame.

SPEAKER_01 38:02

What about your friends and your family? You mentioned your mother, and you mentioned your son, of course. How have they experienced your fame and how has there been any effects on them?

SPEAKER_00 38:12

Well, thank God for teenage boys, you know, beautiful indifference. My son didn't even come to the premiere. He negotiated his way out of it. He gave me a binary choice. The choice was he could come and meet Billy, who wanted to meet him for the characterisation, or he would come to the premiere. So of course I chose the former, and so he didn't have to come to the latter. He hates fuss and drama. My mum has been amazing. She's much more like me, you know, totes and oceans, we say in the trade. So to have her at a private screening close to her house that Netflix very kindly put on because it was post-COVID, and my mum still, you know, doesn't feel comfortable in a in a big cinema or a film premiere. So to sit with my mum Netta in her local cinema for a private screening of a movie that she's never seen, depicting her child played by Billy Piper and her played by the amazing actress, Amanda Redmond, who was on her secret fantasy list that I never even told production about, but was the woman chosen to play her, with tears pouring down our faces, holding hands with free, I love that word, free popcorn. It's expensive, John. That is the most wonderful moment, I think. So my mum, you know, has a poster in her room and, you know, is cuts every cutting out about me in the history of humanity. My son has watched the movie, thankfully, at home once. My mum's watched it a thousand times, you know. That's the beautiful difference, isn't it, between a parent and a child. So between them, I've got the perfect mix of pure unconditional joy and pure unconditional indifference.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

Do you ever look back at uh the sort of sliding doors moment that if you hadn't managed to push as hard as you did for that interview, none of this might have happened, and you and I certainly wouldn't be talking. You wouldn't be the recognizable character that you are, the known person you are, there wouldn't be scoop, there wouldn't be scoops, you know. So much would not have happened.

SPEAKER_00 40:03

I I've got to be honest, I think one of the reasons I have such a sort of uh healthy mental health is I never think about things like that. It's just kind of, you know, it has happened. I'm a grown-up, I take the consequences, good and bad, and there would have been a beautiful life lived otherwise without this. I had a job I really liked, I worked in an institution I largely respected. Lots of the people I worked with were super interesting. I got to spend lots of time with my son and my mum away from work. I could just about afford the bills, and I live in an incredible city and I was doing incredible things. So it would have been still a fantastic life. I was very lucky and so few people get those kinds of things. But this, wow, this is just next level. So yeah, I don't really think about the sliding doors. I'm just uh full of gratitude that it happened. Would you ever choose an anonymity again if you could? No, I wouldn't because of the freedom that this modicum of profile brings. It brings some really good stuff for me. Let's be honest, I now work as a speaker globally, so I get to pay my bills, telling this story, which is an immense privilege and a ton of fun. I get to meet people all over the world who are interested in what I've done and have interesting conversations. I love people, so it's really such a treat. And on the other side of things, I also get, I hope in a small way to be pretentious momentarily, to hopefully inspire the next generation of young journalists who flood my inbox and you know stop me on the street and send me the most kind, generous, flattering comments. But I hope I give them a little bit of hope and remind the country that journalism matters. It's lovely to, you know, slag it off and criticize it. And sometimes that is richly deserved. But ultimately, what we do as journalists when we do it best, we hold powerful people to account. We ask the questions that need to be asked in a democratic, free country. We do something important when it comes to accountability and truth. And I hope, in a sense, that's that's the legacy I'm looking for.

SPEAKER_01 42:10

How fearful are you then that we are now entering, if we're not already in the midst of, a world where separating fact from fiction is becoming increasingly difficult? That even in his first term as president, Trump coined the phase phrase fake news. And that has grown not only in stature, but also uh in the amount that is out there, given how we consume our day-to-day information. How worried are you that we will no longer be able to tell what is fake and what is real?

SPEAKER_00 42:45

I think it's a challenge in general. I mean, I'm very fortunate I've had an incredible education. I was literally a journalist for, you know, 16 years, and still it's hard to discern fact and fiction in the current climate. There are so many resources, so many sources. I take a pragmatic but kind of optimistic view on everything in life, including this. I think it comes down to personal responsibility as well. Whatever you know, President Trump is or isn't doing with his brilliant coining, I write about this in my book, of the phrase fake news. What a what a fantastically clever way to neutralize anyone who dissents with you in that sense, brilliantly, brilliantly played by him for his ends. But all we have control over is how we consume and how we behave. So I always ask people who talk about this to me in any climate to put their money and their time where their mouth is. If you care about these values, the truth, if you care about resources and sources that matter, then invest in them. You know, pay your sub. Don't complain when somebody posts an article that you want to read and say, Well, why has it got a paywall? It has a paywall because journalists need to, you know, remain eating and they need to remain in existence. So whatever you can. Afford. It doesn't have to be, you know, huge amounts of money, whether it's the license fee or whether it's a sub for the times or giving a fiver to the guardian, whatever it is, whatever floats your boat, please treat truth like a luxury item and respect the places that try, to the best of their abilities, to bring information in a fair, even-handed, impartial, and truthful way and consume responsibly.

SPEAKER_01 44:25

That's a very interesting and and and good line that it is a luxury that uh to to to actually have the truth in front of you and and not to doubt it. But I suppose if I then take that and say in a cost of living crisis, we tend not to pay for luxuries and therefore the truth is getting more and more damaged in a way. You worked for a program and you are best known. I know you had other places as well, but Newsnight was somewhere that actually bothered to spend more than a minute and a half looking at a subject. And having worked for the BBC myself for sort of 25 years, I know that when I first started, three and a half minutes devoted to one topic was never really questioned. By the time that I moved on and left and went into uh working in the corporate world, that was a that was a luxury. That was a luxury, as you describe it, that we could spend that amount of time. Newsnight always did that and said, look, it's okay, we want to go in depth. But public appetite is not necessarily for that, is it? Newsnight was regarded as, you know, the 2%, the people who would watch it because they really were interested in knowing what was going on, whereas the rest of them would want a soundbite. And we know that the world cannot be condensed easily into sound bites, but that's what we want. That's how the public appears to want to consume their information. Are you not worried that that's where we're going to end up? In fact, we're already there. We don't bother to go and look at something in detail because, as you say, it's a luxury, it costs, and we don't have the attention span.

SPEAKER_00 46:03

Well, look, I think ultimately we have a beautiful hypocrisy in most of us that we kind of like say we want thing and then we do another. So growing up, I did not grow up on Newsnight. I grew up on the tabs, um, the mail and the express, and we always fought over the mail, no disrespect to the express in my house. You know, I did not grow up surrounded by Sophocles and, you know, kind of like encyclopedias and Wagner. I grew up in the real world and I'm not a snob about how things are consumed. I think ultimately what's important is that people are interested in the truth and or, you know, trying to engage with ideas. How they engage with those ideas I find really interesting because obviously I teach 18 and 19-year-olds, and the way that they engage with ideas is very different from me, but equally the way I engage with ideas is very different from many of my colleagues, for example, who would love to read, you know, books every night when I was watching Real Housewives, and who would love to go to the opera when I just listened to stuff on my headphones and would read all of the papers when I was probably reading Grazia. So I think it's just really important that the messages of, you know, truth and taking interest in the world are passed to the next generation. If at the moment that is consumed through TikTok or YouTube, I'm not concerned about the way that my child, for example, consumes that. I'm concerned about the veracity of the content. And I think really the focus should be is if my kid's watching 30 seconds of news through TikTok or YouTube or wherever it is, is that correct information or not? And that's the kind of conversation I have with him. But I would never say to him, you should be watching newsnight. That's just not realistic anymore. And so we have to unfortunately accept that at the moment that's not realistic, but maybe in the future more people will watch. And I take you back to that first issue, John, which is people often say to me, Newsnight, amazing, you did such an amazing job. And then I ask the question, when was the last time you watched Newsnight? And then it's tumbleweed. So the beautiful hypocrisy is we value things that oftentimes we don't actually personally invest time in, doesn't have to be money. But you know, eyeballs are important. So even if you don't have the money, you can still, you know, kind of like get the eyeballs on it or talk about it or spread those ideas. So we all have ways to empower ourselves and feel not disempowered. But I don't want young people who consume differently to me to feel that the way that they consume is not kind of like the right way to do it, as long as they're asking the right ideas about whether or not that information is correct.

SPEAKER_01 48:42

The wonderful gift of human inverse behavior, whereby we do a lot of things that do not actually positively give us the outcome we want.

SPEAKER_00 48:50

Exactly, exactly that.

SPEAKER_01 48:52

A couple of things before we close. Um, and and we'll go back, if we may, to this big one event in your life that has shaped so many of the years that have come after it. If you had known the full extent of how long the reverberations of that interview would last, would you have done anything different?

SPEAKER_00 49:12

Absolutely not, except I would have written up a full diary rather than what I did, which was have to piece together my recollections from my conversations with my best friend, Yalda. So millions of WhatsApps told me the story because I couldn't tell anyone. It was all top secret. So I only told one person, I shouldn't even have told her, but I would trust her with my life. And she was the only person that knew. The cats didn't know, my mum didn't know, Lucas didn't know. No one in my life knew what I was doing. So I shared conversations with her that meant I could build the building blocks of what happened during that period for my book. But if only I'd had the not been so lazy and written it down, that would have been a trifle easier. Nothing could have been more wonderful than what's happened, but it would have been useful to have a paper diary, that's true.

SPEAKER_01 50:04

And the question we ask everyone on the price of fame is if fame were a product, what should the warning label on the box say?

SPEAKER_00 50:12

Consume carefully, but enjoy.

SPEAKER_01 50:15

And I think that's a fitting end to clearly what has been a beneficial effect of the fame, but by the sounds of it from our conversation, something you've been very successful in curating effectively. Would that be fair?

SPEAKER_00 50:28

Well, whether I've been successful accidentally or deliberately, only time will tell, and who knows. But as I said, I'm grateful to be a recipient of a teeny tiny little bit of profile, as I might call it, or fame as you do, John.

SPEAKER_01 50:43

Sam McAllister, thank you very much indeed. So when you spend your career shaping moments that alter other people's public identities, you might just be surprised how it ends up affecting you. It's a reminder that fame isn't only experienced by those in front of the camera. Sometimes it brushes those who go ahead and frame the shot. And sometimes the consequences continue long after the broadcast fades. Because once a story is released into the world, it rarely belongs to you alone. I'm John Briggs. Until the next time that we add up the price of fame. Thank you for listening and goodbye.