Does Prince Andrew have a teddy bear collection in real life? Netflix’s ‘Scoop’s depiction, investigated

Netflix’s Scoop, now streaming, is a dramatized retelling of Prince Andrew‘s disastrous 2019 Newsnight interview when Andrew, the Duke of York — aka the British royal family’s creepy uncle — unsuccessfully tried to distance himself from the late pedophile and disgraced Jeffrey Epstein.

If there weren’t enough reason for the real-life Prince Andrew (played by Rufus Sewell) to give you the ick, the film shows the disgraced royal throwing a big tantrum early on in the film when a maid doesn’t arrange his teddy bear collection correctly on his bed. All fictionalized movies based on true stories take some liberties with the truth, but was this teddy bear detail fabricated by Scoop‘s writers?

Does the real-life Prince Andrew also collect teddy bears?

There are points in Scoop, based on Newsnight producer Sam McAlister’s memoir Scoops: Behind the Scenes of the BBC’s Most Shocking Interviews, where the truth is a little fuzzy. But McAlister also produced the Netflix movie, and for the most part, it’s pretty accurate.

That means Queen Elizabeth’s second son, who at the time of the Newsnight appearance was around 60 years old, does have a sizable teddy bear collection, which he needed to be arranged properly just before he went to bed, according to those who worked close to the royal.

Andrew was outed as a stuffed bear collector by Charlotte Briggs, employed by the British royal family in the 1990s. Speaking with The Sun in 2022, Briggs said,

“As soon as I got the job, I was told about the teddies and it was drilled into me how he wanted them. I even had a day’s training. Everything had to be just right. It was so peculiar … It was so odd. After all, he was a grown man who had served in the Falklands. But he absolutely loved the ­teddies and was very clear about how he wanted them arranged.”

Each night, Briggs spent an hour positioning the teddy bears, she said, following a handwritten guide. ” … [M]ost bizarre thing to be paid for,” Briggs said.

How many teddy bears does Prince Andrew have?

According to Briggs, Andrew had 72 teddy bears in his collection. Also in 2022, royal biographer Ingrid Seward told The Sun that Andrew kept 12 teddy bears on his bed while he was married to Sarah Ferguson. The royal couple divorced in 1996.

Speaking with The Sun, Seward recalled,

“[Ferguson] showed me to their bedroom and there were around a dozen teddy bears on the marital bed. I said to her, ‘Oh Fergie, you haven’t still got your old teddies have you?’ And she said, ‘No they are all Andrew’s’. We found it very funny and fell about laughing.”

In the past, Andrew has spoken openly about his fondness for stuffed bears. In 2010, he said, “I’ve always collected teddy bears. Everywhere I went in the Navy, I used to buy a little teddy bear, so I’ve got a collection from all over the world of one sort or another.”