Netflix's Scoop: Who is Emily Maitlis and where is she now?

Emily Maitlis is the journalist who interviewed Prince Andrew in the now infamous Newsnight interview back in 2019, but where is she now?

Netflix's Scoop has been released, and fans want to know more about some of the key cast members and their real-life counterparts who appear in the film based on the real Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew. While some want to know more about the real Sam McAlister, played by Billie Piper in Scoop, others are keen to learn more about Emily Maitlis, played by Gillian Anderson in the Netflix film. So who is the real Emily Maitlis and where is she now? Here's what you need to know...

Who is Emily Maitlis?

Emily Maitlis is a journalist who is best known for working for the BBC in several different roles between 2001 and 2022. The journalist started her career in radio broadcasting and documentary-making in Hong Kong for NBC. While working for the BBC she worked as a lead presenter on many of their News programmes, including Newsnight on BBC Two where she worked at first as a relief presenter and later as a lead anchor.

Emily is also an author and released a book titled Airhead: The Imperfect Art of Making News in October 2019, the month before the Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew.

£6.99 at Amazon

Airhead: The Imperfect Art of Making News by Emily Maitlis, £6.99 | Amazon
In this revealing and highly acclaimed book, Emily Maitlis gives a behind-the-scenes look at some of the biggest news stories and interviews of recent years.

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An article from The Times reported on Emily's early life, explaining that she has two older sisters, Nicky and Sally, and was born in Ontario, Canada but grew up in Sheffield. The journalist is Jewish and her father and his parents fled Nazi Germany when he was just three. 

Emily attended state schools in Sheffield and studied English at Queens College in Cambridge. She revealed in her book, Airhead: The Imperfect Art of Making News, that she fell into journalism while living in Hong Kong. This was because she couldn't speak Mandarin and failed to get a job in PR that she interviewed for after the interviewer greeted her in Mandarin and she couldn't work out how to respond. 

Where is Emily Maitlis now?

Following a long career of more than 20 years at the BBC, Emily Maitlis left in 2022 to launch a new daily podcast with Global titled The News Agents. The podcast discusses some of the big news stories of the day and Emily is joined by co-hosts Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall, who both used to work as journalists for the BBC. 

Emily has two sons named Milo and Max and lives with her husband, Investment Manager Mark Gwynne, in Kensington, London. Per Daily Mail, the journalist has spoken on rare occasions about her family and has revealed there have been small challenges when it comes to making sure that she and her husband are on the same page when it comes to values. 

"It’s just the tension of growing up, where both parents aren’t on the same page. It’s much harder to instil one type of, you know…arrangement," said Emily commenting a non-practising Jewish person married to a Catholic. "I would say it’s sort of one of the hardest things in my life. Not in a tragic way, but it’s been a hard thing, because my husband’s Catholic and I’m not very practising."

"I guess the boys have been raised – and I embrace this – in a family where nothing is indoctrinated particularly, so every thought, every opinion, every exploration is sort of up for grabs," she concluded.