Is <em>Anatomy of a Scandal</em> Based on a True Story? (2024)

Politicians behaving badly. Marriages unraveling in the public eye. Allegations of the rich and powerful taking advantage of their privilege. These are the sorts of real-life situations that cable news networks can spin into days of programming—remember, if you can, Boris Johnson’s “partygate” scandal from just a few days back or the recent travails of Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose wife’s taxes became the subject of international attention—but it turns out, they’re just as fascinating when they’re fictional.

In the new series Anatomy of a Scandal, streaming now on Netflix, a rising-star politician named James Whitehouse (played by Rupert Friend) finds his seemingly perfect life upended when a former employee with whom he had an affair accuses him of sexual assault. The incident almost instantly becomes tabloid fodder and spirals out of control, threatening to consume his marriage, end his career, unearth unpleasant secrets from his years at Oxford, and perhaps even topple his good friend the Prime Minister. And while the series is assuredly not based on real-life occurrences—it’s adapted from a 2018 novel by Sarah Vaughn—the drama that unfolds can’t help but feel ripped from the headlines. How’d that happen? Here, the series director S.J. Clarkson and writer and creator Melissa James Gibson explain.

Anatomy of a Scandal is based on a book, not real life. Mostly.

“The book on which the series is based is by Sarah Vaughn,” Gibson says. “She went to Oxford and while she’s said the story isn’t based on anyone in particular, it’s certainly based on a milieu—and we tried to take that and run with it.”

It’s true that the world of power and privilege stemming from Britain’s best-known schools has been written about in fiction at length, and there’s a long history of shocking novels being set at the world’s elite institutions. (Non-fiction has focused on that world, too; Clarkson notes that photographer Dafydd Jones’s book Oxford: The Last Hurrah also proved an important reference for the series.) And while real Oxford alums from Oscar Wilde to Emma Watson have had their own unpleasant moments in the public eye, Clarkson says that given the subject matter of Vaughn’s book, fiction plays perfectly off an already existing public perception. “These are fictional characters,” she says, “but that’s not to say there aren’t areas that cross over to the real world at times.”

If the characters feel familiar, that’s the point.

James Whitehouse is not a real person. Unfortunately, neither is his wife Sophie, played deliciously by Sienna Miller. Nor is Michelle Dockery’s tough-as-nails lawyer, Kate Woodcroft, or anyone else who appears on the Anatomy of a Scandal screen. But each of them feels specific and recognizable, and isn’t that close enough?

“It’s a study of a behavior and psychology,” Gibson says of the series. “The common denominator of the people who try to get away with things like this is that they think the rules—personally or professionally—don’t apply to them.”

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Also similar to real life, feelings about the people we see on screen are meant to shift over the course of the season. “We want to make it feel real and grounded, but with a kind of allure,” explains Clarkson. “You look at their house and think, that’s the kind of place I’d like to live. But as the story goes on you start to wonder, is it worth it?”

Which isn’t to say the real world is ignored entirely.

Sarah Vaughn’s novel might have been a great jumping-off point to create Scandal—“It was fantastic storytelling,” says Clarkson, “I just knew it would make great telly”—but it wasn’t only fiction that influenced the series.

“I read a lot of newspapers and tried to immerse myself in that world view,” Gibson—who also read George Orwell’s 1984 while working on the series, says. “I read both the Daily Mail and the Mirror and tried to absorb their breadth. What was interesting to me as an outsider was to see how class figures into culture and always has [in Britain] in a way that isn’t quite the same here. It seems like much more of a fixed entity; if you’re born into a certain part of society, opportunities are closed off to you. That’s why it felt important not to adapt the story and move it to the U.S., it would lose so much of its richness.”

Clarkson notes that the show also engaged the knowledge of legal experts to help make courtroom scenes feel as true-to-life as possible. “We wanted that to feel believable,” she says, before adding that some of the raucous college party scenes were also informed by the real world. “I went to a few parties in the 90s, so that was helpful.”

In the end, what’s real or not might not matter.

Whether James Whitehouse is entirely made up or sprinkled here and there with aspects of real-life British politicians is almost beside the point when you consider what Anatomy of a Scandalreally hopes to do. “It’s great, binge-worthy TV, but also it hopefully leaves you thinking,” says Clarkson.

The series is meant to raise questions about power, privilege, and the way the world today tackles problems. It prods at institutions and traditions, and reactions to the twists and turns of the plot might actually reveal more about viewers than they do about what’s on screen.

“With adaptations you always think about the opportunities to take a story further,” Gibson says. “For me, the way into this was that I responded to this connection between these two women [played by Miller and Dockery]. There’s an invisible tether between them throughout the whole story. They’re reckoning with themselves and their places in society. It’s always interesting to see how people in power try to stay on top—whether or not they’re successful.”