Trivia

This movie narrowly escaped an X rating in the U.S. because of some questionable footage during the Cliveden House orgy scene. Closer scrutiny revealed that two extras were having real sex on a piano in one of the background scenes. Even though the images were blurry, the scene had to be trimmed for all general releases to avoid the restrictive rating, which BBFC censor James Ferman accomplished by defusing the light from a table-lamp in the foreground. The inquisitive-minded will find this sequence about 49 minutes and five seconds into the movie.

There were strenuous efforts made by many politicians to prevent this movie from being made, even though the world-famous events it depicted had taken place more than a quarter of a century earlier. Sir Ian McKellen and Sir John Hurt received numerous letters from famous members of Parliament, asking them to decline their roles. Neither one did. McKellen replied politely to most of these letters; Hurt ignored them, and told journalists that their senders were hypocrites, who were merely anxious to prevent the truth from being told.

Joanne Whalley's husband at the time, Val Kilmer objected to his wife doing the nude scene. Harvey Weinstein hired a body double for the scene. When Joanne arrived on-set, she wasn't happy with how the double looked. So Joanne ended up doing the nude scene herself.

Although billed in the cast as "Matinee Idol", Trevor Eve's character is named David Fairfax, Jr. It is a reference to Douglas Fairbanks Jr.'s real-life role in the Profumo affair. He was not named in this movie for legal reasons.

The film-makers wanted to use the actual footage of a famous TV interview with Lord Hailsham in which he angrily said that "a great party is not to be brought down by a proven liar and a woman of easy virtue", but Hailsham, still very much alive in 1989, refused to permit it, just as he also made strenuous efforts to prevent the film from being made at all. As a result, the interview was recreated with an actor, Iain Cuthbertson, who was encouraged to portray Hailsham as an apoplectic buffoon.