Omid Scobie spent years reporting on the British Royal Family and chronicling their stories through his bestselling books Finding Freedom and Endgame, but now the former royal journalist is stepping inside palace walls in a new way. With Royal Spin, Scobie makes his fiction debut alongside bestselling author Robin Benway, turning firsthand royal insight into a sharply observed novel that pulls back the curtain on the Buckingham Palace press office.
The story follows Lauren, a former White House press officer who applies for a position at Buckingham Palace on a whim and completely upends her life in the process. Scobie tells Marie Claire that unlike other royal novels, Royal Spin “is set in a space that has never really been explored before.”
“Like yes, we have seen a young woman move to a European country,” he says. “Emily in Paris did a great job of that, but we haven’t seen this kind of culture clash within a traditional institution.”
It’s a world Scobie is deeply familiar with, but Benway, who writes young adult fiction, says that like Lauren, she was “on a parallel path” learning about the inside mechanics of the Royal Family.
“I certainly did not have the immersive knowledge that Omid had when we first started working together,” Benway says. “But I knew that there was a lot of material there coming from purely as a fiction author. Like it’s it’s almost Shakespearean. It’s family dynamics. It’s so not universal and yet extremely universal, the effects of your family and how does it affect the generations after that.”
Omid Scobie and Robin Benway have collaborated on their first novel together.
(Image credit: Luke Fontana)
The authors share that Royal Spin shows a side to the royal machine that no one ever gets to see, as Scobie noted when reflecting on his first visit inside Buckingham Palace’s press office.
He tells Marie Claire it was surprising “seeing just how kind of like frayed around the edges and unglamorous” it was, adding the offices are “completely the opposite to the kind of opulence of the public or even private spaces at the front of the palace.”
When asked if any of the scenes in the book were inspired by real situations, Scobie says he was careful not to make any of the characters or plot lines feel too similar to the actual Royal Family.
“It was interesting because I think whilst this book does mirror—I’d like to think— accurately what the behind-the-scenes operation at the palace looks like, the actual goings on in the book I wanted to make sure didn’t feel like were ripped out of recent headlines,” the former royal reporter says.
“I wanted it to feel evergreen so if reading this in 10 years time it doesn’t feel like, ‘Oh this is kind of about Harry and Meghan or this is about Prince Andrew‘ or whatever it is,” he adds.
Royal Spin was released on February 10.
(Image credit: William Morrow Books)
Royal Spin will also make it to the small screen in the near future. In 2024, Universal Television announced it’s developing a television show based on the novel.
“We have a network now and there will be an announcement soon,” Scobie shares, adding that “scripts are being written and it’s very much in process.”
When discussing the TV adaptation, Scobie says: “It’s the same world, but there are different stories within it. And I think obviously with a show, you’re able to have more fun with some of the kind of more peripheral characters, and some of the kind of smaller things that go on at the palace.”
Along with the TV series, the authors tell Marie Claire to expect more to come from them in terms of novels.
“I think Robin and I knew from the day we first sat down together to work on this that this was a story that would go far beyond the 380 pages of this first book,” Scobie says.
Benway adds, “I think also not only does the setting provide ample opportunity for multiple stories, multiple books, but I feel like it’s the characters. Like, just me as the writer, I want to see what happens next with them.”
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