The Post (2017 Film) Trivia
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48 free The Post (2017 Film) trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This The Post trivia quiz covers Steven Spielberg's 2017 film about The Washington Post and the Pentagon Papers, along with the real history behind it. It asks about the film itself (the first project to unite Spielberg, Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, shot in a hurry in the summer of 2017 while Ready Player One was still in post-production), the people it portrays (Katharine Graham, Ben Bradlee, Ben Bagdikian, Daniel Ellsberg, Robert McNamara) and the events it dramatises: the leak, the injunction against The New York Times, the decision to print and the 6-3 Supreme Court ruling. It also digs into the details fans and history buffs argue about: whose voice plays Nixon, why the film was briefly called The Papers, what the New York Times veterans thought of it, how many pages the study ran to, and what happened to Ellsberg's trial. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who saw the film, a third need a good memory for it, and the rest reward people who know the history as well as the movie. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the film, the Pentagon Papers and the people involved before publishing, and each question carries the sentence that establishes it. If you think one is wrong, use the report button and we will look again.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Post was nominated for Best Picture at the 2018 Oscars but lost to which film?
The Shape of Water
The Shape of Water won; The Post, which its director had raced from first reading the script to a first screening in about nine months, left the ceremony with nothing.
Q 02Which actress plays Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham in The Post?
Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep plays a publisher still finding her voice, talked over in a boardroom full of men until the night she gives the order to print.
Q 03In The Post, Katharine Graham faces her big decision in the same week her company does what?
Sells shares to the public
Sells shares to the public: the stock offering was brand new, and its backers could walk away if a "catastrophic" event struck, which criminal charges against the paper might be.
Q 04Which two writers share the screenplay credit on The Post?
Liz Hannah and Josh Singer
Liz Hannah and Josh Singer came from opposite ends of the business: she was a first-time screenwriter who sold the script on spec, and he was brought in for rewrites after his Oscar for Spotlight.
Q 05Which former Sony Pictures chief bought the spec script for The Post at auction in October 2016?
Amy Pascal
Amy Pascal's new production company won the auction, paying from her own discretionary fund; five months later the script had its director and both of its stars.
Q 06Spielberg made The Post while post-production continued on which other film he directed?
Ready Player One
Ready Player One was deep in effects work at Warner Bros., so his team held a scheduling "war room" to be sure both could be finished, and The Post still reached theaters first.
Q 07How does The Post put Richard Nixon on screen?
With his real White House tapes
With his real White House tapes: no actor speaks the president's lines, so each threat he makes against the press is heard in Nixon's own recorded voice.
Q 08Where did The Post hold its premiere on December 14, 2017?
The Newseum in Washington, D.C.
The Newseum in Washington, D.C., was a museum devoted to the press, a pointed choice of venue; the film then opened in nine theaters and went nationwide on January 12, 2018.
Q 09The Post's leading lady was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar but lost to which winner?
Frances McDormand
Frances McDormand won, then asked every female nominee in the room to stand with her, calling on The Post's star by name to get up first so that the rest would follow.
Q 10The Post opens in 1966 with analyst Daniel Ellsberg in which setting?
On patrol with troops in Vietnam
On patrol with troops in Vietnam, he sees how badly the war is going, then watches the defense secretary tell reporters the opposite.
Q 11Which organization named The Post the best film of 2017?
The National Board of Review
The National Board of Review handed over its prizes at a New York gala where Robert De Niro, introducing The Post's leading lady, turned his speech into a profane attack on President Trump.
Q 12Which composer wrote the orchestral score for The Post?
John Williams
John Williams had been due to score the director's next film as well, but both were being finished at once, so he chose this one and gave the other up.
Q 13Early in The Post, the paper's reporter Judith Martin is shut out of covering which event?
Tricia Nixon's wedding
Q 21Which justice wrote in the 6-3 ruling behind The Post that the press serves "the governed, not the governors"?
Hugo Black
Hugo Black went on: the government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government.
Q 22The final scene of The Post shows a security guard discovering a burglary at which building?
The Watergate complex
The Watergate complex break-in came a year after the court ruling, and the film closes on its discovery: the first thread of the scandal that brought down a president.
Q 23Which former New York Times counsel praised The Post as a movie but dismissed it as "bad history"?
James Goodale
Tricia Nixon's wedding was closed to Martin, accused of crashing her sister Julie's reception, and Bradlee refuses to send anyone in her place.
Q 14Which actor plays Daniel Ellsberg in The Post?
Matthew Rhys
Matthew Rhys plays the military analyst who smuggles the secret study out of his office and photocopies it on the quiet, long before a page of it reaches a newspaper.
Q 15Which Breaking Bad actor plays Washington Post editor Ben Bagdikian in The Post?
Bob Odenkirk
Bob Odenkirk's Bagdikian does the legwork, hunting down the leaker from one pay phone after another and spilling his pocketful of change across the pavement as he goes.
Q 16In The Post, Ellsberg first leaks the study to which New York Times reporter, a former Vietnam War correspondent?
Neil Sheehan
Neil Sheehan had covered the war for UPI and the Times; a Times team then spent three months studying the documents before the first article ran.
Q 17In The Post, which think tank employs Daniel Ellsberg when he copies the classified study?
The RAND Corporation
The RAND Corporation held a copy of the study in its own files, which is how one of its analysts was able to carry the pages out to be photocopied.
Q 18In The Post, which former Secretary of Defense, a friend of Graham, warns her about an unflattering story?
Robert McNamara
Robert McNamara had commissioned the secret study himself in 1967; in the film he tips off his friend Graham that the Times is about to run a story drawn from it.
Q 19In The Post, how do other newspapers respond once the Times and the Post are taken to court?
They publish the documents too
They publish the documents too: dailies around the country ran their own stories from the study, a show of solidarity the film hands to Graham as vindication.
Q 20In The Post, why do the paper's lawyers panic after Graham gives the go-ahead to print?
Bagdikian shared the Times's source
Bagdikian shared the Times's source, the leaker himself, and the lawyers warn that this could bring criminal charges down on the paper and the people who run it.
James Goodale, the paper's top lawyer in 1971, argued that the film hands the Post credit his own paper had earned, as if Hollywood had filmed the Times cracking Watergate.
Q 24The closing credits of The Post dedicate the film to which filmmaker, once a newspaper reporter herself?
Nora Ephron
Nora Ephron, who died in 2012, was close to the people who made it: she had written or directed films starring each of The Post's two leads.
Q 25Which 1976 film, in which Jason Robards played Bradlee, begins where The Post ends?
All the President's Men
All the President's Men rebuilt the Post's newsroom on a California soundstage rather than film in the real one, and had boxes of the paper's actual trash shipped in to dress the set.
Q 26Which cinematographer, Steven Spielberg's regular since 1993, shot The Post?
Janusz Kaminski
Janusz Kaminski shot it on film, as Spielberg insists, and chose soft, undirected light so that a 1971 story would feel like the present day.
Q 27Katharine Graham's 1997 memoir, which won a Pulitzer Prize, has which title?
Personal History
Personal History was the book Spielberg handed his lead actress to prepare, along with Ben Bradlee's own memoir, A Good Life.
Q 28How had Katharine Graham come to run The Washington Post by the time of The Post?
Her husband, the publisher, died
Her husband, the publisher, died by suicide in 1963; her father had handed the paper to his son-in-law, not to her, back in 1946.
Q 29Which actor plays Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee in The Post?
Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks plays Bradlee as an editor furious at being scooped by The New York Times; when a court order halts that paper's series, he sees his opening and goes after the documents himself.
Q 30With which friend and former colleague did Daniel Ellsberg photocopy the secret Vietnam study in 1969?
Anthony Russo
Anthony Russo, a friend from their days as fellow researchers, helped with the copying and was later indicted alongside Ellsberg as his alleged accomplice.