A new Prime Video series will tackle the royal family drama that The Crown won’t touch. The streamer’s upcoming limited series A Very Royal Scandal focuses on Prince Andrew’s infamous 2019 interview with the BBC, which drew fresh attention to the sexual assault allegations against the prince and his association with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Michael Sheen will play Prince Andrew
Who will step into the Andrew role in A Very Royal Scandal? Michael Sheen (Good Omens, Masters of Sex) will take play the prince, according to Variety. Ruth Wilson (Luther, The Affair) will play Emily Maitlis, the BBC interviewer who grilled the Duke of York about Virginia Giuffre’s claims that he’d assaulted her when she was a teen, as well as his ties to Epstein. The blowback from the interview eventually forced the prince to step away from his royal duties.
A Very Royal Scandal is in production in the U.K. It does not yet have a release date. Other cast members include Joanna Scanlan as Prince Andrew’s private secretary Amanda Thirsk, Alex Jennings as Sir Edward Young, and Éanna Hardwicke as Stewart Maclean. The series will Maitlis’s journey as a journalist leading up to the interview with Andrew.
The three-episode drama is the third in Amazon’s series of about past scandals in the U.K. A Very English Scandal focused on Jeremy Thorpe (Hugh Grant), a member of parliament who was accused of trying to murder his former lover Norman Scott (Ben Whishaw) in 1975. A Very British Scandal dramatized the volatile relationship between Margaret Campbell, the Duchess of Argyll (Claire Foy) and Iain Campbell, the Duke of Argyll, and their highly publicized 1963 divorce.
Netflix is also working on a movie about the Prince Andrew scandal
Amazon isn’t the only streamer planning to dramatize Prince Andrew’s BBC Newsnight appearance. Netflix’s Scoop, will also focus on the bombshell interview. Rufus Sewell will play Andrew in the movie and Gillian Anderson will play Maitlis. Charity Wakefield will portray Princess Beatrice and Romola Garai will play Newsnight editor Esme Wren. Billie Piper plays Sam McAlister, who negotiated and secured the booking, and Keeley Hawes portrays Thirsk.
Other cast members include Lia Williams as BBC director of news and current affairs Fran Unsworth, Connor Swindells as Jae Donnelly, the photographer who took an incriminating photo of Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein in Central Park, and Amanda Redman as McAlister’s mother.
Prince Andrew thought he could use the BBC interview to ‘control the narrative’
Andrew’s disastrous interview with the BBC effectively ended his career as a royal. But when he agreed to talk with Maitlis, he did so thinking that it would actually help repair his public image. While some friends warned him that exposing himself to a journalist’s hard-hitting questions would not end well, Andrew forged ahead. The naive prince – widely believed to be his mother, Queen Elizabeth II’s favorite son – agreed to a candid, wide-ranging conversation with Maitlis, which proved to be his undoing.
“He wanted to control the narrative,” the BBC’s McCalister said in the 2023 A&E document, Secrets of Prince Andrew. “Imagine you’ve spent 59 years with everyone blowing smoke up you, telling you you’re incredible, you’re amazing. They never contradict you. He’s never had somebody say the word no.”
Andrew’s missteps in the interview included saying he didn’t regret his friendship with Epstein and his widely ridiculed claim that Giuffre’s allegations were false because he didn’t sweat. But surprisingly, the duke was initially under the impression that things had gone well. It was only later that the damage to his reputation became clear.
For her part, Maitlis has said her goal was to get to the truth, not destroy a member of the royal family.
“He lost a lot from doing that interview,” Maitlis said in Secrets of Prince Andrew. “My intention was not to ruin his life. That was not on my radar.”
Source: Variety
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