Fans may have missed it on first watch, but Kate Winslet's daughter Mia Threapleton is in a key scene in Netflix's new film Scoop, which chronicles the journey made by women at the BBC to secure a critical Prince Andrew interview for its program Newsnight. In that infamous 2019 interview, Andrew spoke about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In the film, Threapleton plays a palace aide who incorrectly arranges Andrew's teddy bear collection on his bed and is chided for it. (Rufus Sewell portrays the Duke of York in the movie.) Despite appearing in only one scene, it's one of the scenes that is generating the most buzz online.
Many have missed the fact that this young rising actress is the daughter of beloved Titanic star Winslet, thanks to her differing surname. Once you're aware of it, you quickly see the resemblance between them.
Threapleton has appeared in The Buccaneers, Shadows, and I Am, where she starred opposite her award-winning mother.
Back to Andrew for a moment: according to The Sun, the prince does have a teddy bear collection. A former Buckingham Palace maid, Charlotte Briggs, recalled how she would be required to arrange the toys every morning: “As soon as I got the job, I was told about the teddies and it was drilled into me how he wanted them," she explained. "I even had a day's training. It was so peculiar. After all, he was a grown man who had served in the Falkland."
She continued “Each had to be carefully positioned. They were old-fashioned teddy bears— the Steiff ones—and nearly all of them had sailor suits on and hats. It took me half an hour to arrange them. Then at bedtime, I had to take all the teddies off and arrange them around the room."
Oh, but there's more. “They each had a set place," Briggs said. "We had to stack the smaller ones in an unused fireplace, again in size order, to make them look pretty. His two favorite bears sat on two thrones either side of the bed. The others would sit at the foot of the bed on the floor.”
In the scene from Scoop, you can see Andrew become increasingly frustrated with Threapleton's character, who grows more and more uncomfortable.
Threapleton is the daughter of Winslet and filmmaker Jim Threapleton; Winslet and Threapleton were married from 1998 to 2001. Having different surnames has proven Winslet "really great" for Threapleton as she auditions.
“So that initial job out of the gate, she slipped right under the radar and the people who cast her had absolutely no idea she was my daughter,” Winslet said. “And, of course, that was my biggest fear.”
As for her daughter's choice to follow in her footsteps, Winslet wasn't surprised in the least. She appeared on Lorraine and discussed her daughter's move into acting. “That’s been a wonderful thing,” Winslet explained. “I think I knew it was coming, I always suspected. And then a few years ago, she turned around and said, ‘I think I would like to give it a go.’”
Fascinatingly, this isn't Winslet's only link to Scoop, as she actually dated the leading man, Rufus Sewell. Before appearing as the Duke of York in Scoop, Sewell was once lucky enough to play Winslet's love interest—only he didn't return the interest onscreen. The actors famously starred in 2006's The Holiday, where Sewell's character Jasper leaves Winslet's character Iris heartbroken when he announces his engagement. It fuels the plot, leading Iris to wish to escape to L.A., where she meets a new love interest.
While things didn't work onscreen for the duo, they did briefly have chemistry off-set. Years before filming the Christmas classic, Winslet and Sewell shared a brief romance while working together at the Royal Shakespeare Company. This was in the early 1990s, so pre-Titanic fame for Winslet. The pair dated for about three months and have remained friends since.
She brought this up recently when asked if she had watched Scoop yet (which she hadn't). "No," Winslet said on The Chris Evans Breakfast Show. "But I bumped into Gillian Anderson at an event not very long ago, and I was asking her about it. And Rufus Sewell is so terrific, you know, I used to go out with Rufus Sewell years ago. Back in the day, a long time ago, I think I must have been 21 or something."
She continued "He's so fantastic, and to see him front and center in a way that I think we haven't done on British television for a long, long time, very long time, I'm really, really excited to see what he does," she said.
