A VERY ROYAL SCANDAL Trailer (2024) Ruth Wilson, Michael Sheen

A VERY ROYAL SCANDAL Trailer (2024) Ruth Wilson, Michael Sheen

A VERY ROYAL SCANDAL Trailer (2024) Ruth Wilson, Michael Sheen
© 2024 - Prime Video

When Prince Andrew invited BBC current affairs show “Newsnight” to interview him at Buckingham Palace in 2019, neither he – nor his interviewer Emily Maitlis – had any inkling that it would not only result in the British royal’s public disgrace, including being stripped of his titles and patronages, but would spawn two dramatizations within five years. (And it’s likely they won’t be the last).

The interview was, to put it plainly, seismic. Not just personally catastrophic for Andrew, who found himself effectively barred from public life after it aired, as well as paying out a multi-million-dollar settlement to his accuser Virginia Giuffre, but reverberated through the royal family all the way up to the monarch.

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The outsize impact of that interview is something that Michael Sheen, who plays the prince in Prime Video’s “A Very Royal Scandal,” out on Thursday, has had ample time to contemplate. To get into the role, he watched the original interview “hundreds upon hundreds of times,” he tells Variety. “The first thing I did when I woke up was listen to the audio of it.”

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Having spent that much time listening to it, why does Sheen think it was so earthshattering? “It’s so rare that someone in a position of power and privilege would allow themselves to be put in that position,” he replies thoughtfully. “Usually what all too often happens is, if there is a controversial — possibly illegal — situation someone throws money at it and it goes away.” (That is, of course, what eventually did happen after Giuffre sued Andrew in New York for rape. Another reason Sheen thinks the interview is so important: “There has been no court case — that is the closest it seems that we’ll ever get to a person being made accountable in some way.”)

“But for a person to voluntarily put themselves in a position where they are being made accountable when that person is never having to be accountable, has never been made to be accountable, and it says so much that that person doesn’t even expect to be made accountable — You know, [he] goes into that situation and allows it to happen because he thinks he’s going to be in control of it,” he marvels.

Playing opposite Sheen is “Luther” star Ruth Wilson, who portrays a contradictory Maitlis: at work she is all business: military-inspired suits, razor sharp focus and, as Wilson says, “whip smart.” But her outwardly cool demeanour belies frenzied kicking below the surface, balancing a busy home life with two kids, a husband and a handbag “covered in pen ink.” There are also darker themes. As it’s revealed towards the end of three-part drama, Maitlis has had her own brush with toxic masculinity, having been the victim of stalking. The journalist, who is an executive producer on the drama, had little vanity about Wilson’s depiction, right down to a scene in which Wilson, as Maitlis, sits in on a meeting with curlers in her hair. “She was quite happy for things like her chaotic side to be seen a bit,” says Wilson. “I push it probably more than she actually is.”

Wilson, like most of Britain, had watched the interview live in November 2019 and been “pretty amazed by it.” When she was initially approached for the role of Maitlis, she did worry about whether there was anything more to say. “I was like, ‘How can you make it any better than what it already is?’” she remembers thinking. But the result, she says, “Is not just a recreation of that interview.”

Earlier this year Netflix released “Scoop,” the first dramatization of the interview, starring Gillian Anderson as Maitlis and Rufus Sewell as Prince Andrew. That version is based on a book by “Newsnight” producer Sam McAllister. With the interview itself having attracted a global audience (not to mention countless memes about sweating and London restaurant chain Pizza Express), plus one recreation already available, some viewers might wonder what “A Very Royal Scandal” can bring to the table.

For a start, it’s a three part series that goes deeper (“The Crown” style) into events that take place before and after the interview itself (“Scoop,” by contrast, is a single drama lasting just over 100 minutes). For Wilson, what appealed was also screenwriter Jeremy Brock’s “exploration of power and privilege and responsibility and journalism and that relationship between the press and the Royals and the BBC.”

Sheen felt the same about the screenplay. While striving for a “true and faithful” portrait of what transpired between Andrew and Maitlis, he knew there was “no point in just copying it. “I hope that it is close enough to the original to be thrilling for an audience,” he says. “But at the same time, I hope that the secret story of it, the thing that’s going on underneath that isn’t about copying something is also something that an audience can respond to and recognize as well.”

Wilson spent a lot of time with Maitlis in preparation for the role, even having the opportunity to turn the tables around and interview the now legendary interviewer. “I asked her straight-up questions,” Wilson reveals. “I went straight in with, do you think he’s guilty? And her answer was, ‘Well, guilty of what, you know?’ So we had big debates. It was brilliant.”

Sheen, of course, did not have the same opportunity. But despite his portrayal of Andrew as pompous and rude (the first line he utters on screen is “Fuck off,” said to a footman) he’s also curiously childlike, at one point challenging his private secretary Amanda Thirsk to an impromptu race in the garden. Sheen is a master impressionist, having portrayed a succession of public figures – including former Prime Minister Tony Blair, broadcaster David Frost and gameshow host Chris Tarrant – on screen with accuracy and humanity. It’s a skill he brings to his portrait of Andrew and it begs the question whether, having inhabited the prince’s expensive shoes, did he feel any sympathy for his vertiginous fall from grace?

“No,” Sheen says without hesitation. “I don’t feel sympathy for any of the characters because that’s not my job. That’s a judgment. I don’t make judgments on a character. Empathy is a very different thing.”

“Drama, I think, is dependent on challenging the audience at times, particularly with characters that they may go into having quite strong preconceived ideas about,” he continues. “Challenging them to allow themselves to kind of see things from that character’s point of view, regardless of whether they agree with them or have sympathy or anything else, but to kind of go, ‘Oh, that’s what it’s maybe like, Wow. I didn’t realize that. Now my understanding of this situation is maybe different how it was before.’”

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If you haven’t seen the lively Scoop, Netflix’s version of the catastrophic (for him) Prince Andrew Newsnight interview about his relationship with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, then you might find more to appreciate in A Very Royal Scandal. This is the second time the story has been given a “real events, fictionalised for dramatic purposes” preamble in the same year. As with Scoop, it’s a buffet of top-tier acting talent. Here, Ruth Wilson is Emily Maitlis, and takes the deep voice very seriously, while Michael Sheen is Prince Andrew, and Joanna Scanlan his adoring and doomed private secretary, Amanda Thirsk. The performances are predictably strong, but it lacks the heft you might expect from a such a heavyweight cast, and from a series that follows the excellent A Very English Scandal and A Very British Scandal.

Over three steady episodes, it follows Maitlis and her Newsnight team as they pursue the interview with, and allegations against, the Prince, before re-creating the interview and exploring the fallout. Scoop focused on the producer Sam McAlister, played by Billie Piper, and turned her dogged pursuit of the sit-down into a sort of thriller. This sidelines her almost completely. Instead, it sticks with Maitlis and the Prince, fleshing out their private lives and offering a more in-depth character portrait of each, as they move towards their shared fate. It is elegantly done, though it ambles forward rather than sprinting for the finish line.

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That means Maitlis at home, with her husband and sons, having a post-work vodka, talking to her whippet and Googling the links between Epstein and Andrew. We join her as the BBC is under pressure from the right-wing press and the government for its seeming partisanship. Maitlis is rebuked for a Brexit-inspired, on-camera eye-roll, and while Paxman and Humphries would be applauded for that kind of thing, she says, she still feels she has to prove herself. The Andrew interview would be perfect. “I’m not losing out to bloody ITV,” she booms.

The TV industry stuff feels pleased with itself, particularly when it is placed against the absurdity of royal life, shown here to be a surreal catalogue of hunting, golf, fine dining and charades. This goes far deeper into Prince Andrew’s world than Scoop did, and you can see that it is fascinated with his psyche, and the question of not only why he would do the interview, but why he seemed to think, in the immediate aftermath, that it had gone rather well indeed.

We get to meet Fergie (Claire Rushbrook), loyal and amoral, who describes herself and Andrew as “the happiest divorcees in the world”, and has sent her ex-husband off to his old friend Epstein with “a fucking begging bowl” to settle her many debts. Sheen’s Andrew is a near-tragic buffoon, a man-child who believes that he is charm personified, but berates his staff with endless “fuck offs” and furious tirades. If the drama makes an effort to humanise him, it does so through his daughters, Beatrice (Honor Swinton Byrne) and Eugenie (Sofia Oxenham), who by the end appear to if not accept, then at least comprehend the mess their father has made.

A comparison to the later Crown here is inevitable, not least because this spends so much time in the royal households, and runs into the same problem of trying to dramatise very recent history, still fresh in the minds of most viewers. It is hard for it not to dip into caricature. Still, Sheen is great as the ranting Prince – “I am the second fucking son of the fucking sovereign” – but the underplayed star of the whole thing might be Alex Jennings, who plays the late Queen’s private secretary, Sir Edward Young, a smooth master of the old ways. He warns Thirsk against the Newsnight interview, explaining that the royals need protecting from themselves. They live a “frictionless existence”, he says. They will never know what it is to miss a train, because the train will always wait for them if they are late.

The fallout from the Newsnight interview had no intention of waiting for the Prince. This ends with a closeup of that 2001 photograph, of Andrew with the then 17-year-old Virginia Guiffre at Ghislaine Maxwell’s London home, re-created with the actors for both A Very Royal Scandal and Scoop, but also powerfully left in its original form in the final moments here. It is a reminder that this isn’t a simple case of a stupid man making a stupid mistake. When Maitlis replied to Andrew’s description of Epstein’s behaviour as “unbecoming”, she did so with an astonished rejoinder that Epstein was “a sex offender”. Like Maitlis, A Very Royal Scandal handles itself with comportment and class, but as a drama, it is too frictionless for its own good.
The latest Prince Andrew project has dropped trailer.

A Very Royal Scandal, which launches in a fortnight, stars Michael Sheen as the disgraced Prince with Ruth Wilson playing the role of his interviewer Emily Maitlis.

A Very Royal Scandal is a three-part TV series as opposed to Scoop, the Netflix feature that starred Rufus Sewell and Gillian Anderson in the lead roles. It is the third in the A Very… series that Amazon has previously co-produced with the BBC, although this one will only air on Prime Video. Unlike Scoop, Maitlis is involved with this one as an EP.

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In the trailer, Wilson’s Maitlis can be seen pursuing the story that would make her a global household name and destroy the Prince’s reputation in a pivotal moment in British history, which saw him buckle under questions around his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and make a sea of humiliating utterances.

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Along with Sheen and Wilson, the series will star Joanna Scanlan (After Love, Notes on a Scandal) as Amanda Thirsk, Alex Jennings (Your Christmas or Mine?) as Sir Edward Young, Éanna Hardwicke (The Sixth Commandment) as Stewart Maclean and Claire Rushbrook (Secrets & Lies) as Sarah Ferguson. Newly revealed additional cast members include Nicholas Burns (The Serpent Queen) as Mark Gwynne, Lydia Leonard (Ten Percent) as Esme Wren, Alexander Owen (Dreaming Whilst Black) as Jake Morris, Clare Calbraith (Mr Bates vs The Post Office) as Sam Mcalister, Sam Troughton (Chernobyl) as Donal Mccabe, Honor Swinton Byrne (The Souvenir) as Princess Beatrice and Sofia Oxenham (Extraordinary) as Princess Eugenie.

The series was directed by Julian Jarrold and written by Jeremy Brock. It was produced by Blueprint Television for Amazon MGM Studios, and distributed worldwide by Sony Pictures Television. Karen Thrussell, Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, Diarmuid McKeown, Jeremy Brock, Jarrold, and Maitlis herself serve as executive producers. Josh Hyams serves as a producer on the series.

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A Very Royal Scandal
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Trailer
Here’s the trailer for Prime Video’s take on the notorious Emily Maitlis and Prince Andrew interview, A Very Royal Scandal.

Michael Sheen and Ruth Wilson star as Prince Andrew and Emily Maitlis in the three-part series that follows the actions of Maitlis and Prince Andrew in the lead-up to the interview, the groundbreaking event itself and the questions left in its wake that changed their lives forever.

Joining Michael Sheen as Prince Andrew and Ruth Wilson as Emily Maitlis are Joanna Scanlan as Amanda Thirsk, Alex Jennings as Sir Edward Young, Éanna Hardwicke as Stewart Maclean, and Claire Rushbrook as Sarah Ferguson. Newly revealed cast members include Nicholas Burns as Mark Gwynne, Lydia Leonard as Esme Wren, Alexander Owen as Jake Morris, Clare Calbraith as Sam Mcalister, Sam Troughton as Donal Mccabe, Honor Swinton Byrne as Princess Beatrice and Sofia Oxenham as Princess Eugenie.

The series was directed by Julian Jarrold and written by Jeremy Brock. It was produced by Blueprint Television for Amazon MGM Studios, and distributed worldwide by Sony Pictures Television. Karen Thrussell, Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, Diarmuid McKeown, Jeremy Brock, Jarrold, and Maitlis herself serve as executive producers. Josh Hyams serves as a producer on the series.

PIC: Ruth Wilson as Emily Maitlis and Michael Sheen as Prince Andrew in A Very Royal Scandal Photo by Christopher Raphael/Blueprint/Sony Pictures Television
For decades, the British Royal Family managed to maintain a certain mystique and allure. Tabloid fodder and salacious stories leaked occasionally, but in the 1990s, the scandals surrounding Princess Diana and King Charles’ marriage almost caused the entire enterprise to collapse. However, the royals seemed to hit new heights in popularity in 2018 when Prince Harry married Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. Yet, just a few short years later, it all crumbled. Queen Elizabeth II was ailing, Prince Harry and Meghan exited the royal family and Prince Andrew‘s long relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein resurfaced. Created by Jeremy Brock, Prime Video‘s limited series “A Very Royal Scandal” is a frank and engaging examination of the shocking interview between Prince Andrew (Michael Sheen) and journalist Emily Maitlis (Ruth Wilson) that would lead to the Duke of York’s ousting from public life and define Maitlis’ career.

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“A Very Royal Scandal,” the third iteration of Prime Video’s “Scandal” series, is the second time this year the story behind the Prince Andrew interview has been brought to the screen — in April, Netflix released its film, “Scoop,” which covered the same territory. While this limited series is from Maitlis’ perspective, “Scoop,” starring Gillian Anderson, was adapted from Newsnight producer Sam McAlister’s autobiographical book, “Scoops.” The Emmy-nominated film highlights McAlister’s pivotal but overlooked role in getting the interview to air.

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“A Very Royal Scandal” opens on Nov. 14, 2019, the day Maitlis and her BBC Newsnight team filmed the interview with Prince Andrew at Buckingham Palace. While the Duke of York and his then-private secretary Amanda Thirsk (Joanna Scanlan) seem almost delighted by the idea of the spotlight, Maitlis is disheveled. She rushes into the royal residence with a garment bag and purse swinging wildly in her hands; it’s clear that this conversation has only just been greenlit. From there, the episode flashes back in time, and the audience witnesses the inflection points leading to this moment.

In 2011, during a golfing excursion, Prince Andrew learns the Daily Mail has a picture of him from 2001 posing alongside then 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre, who says the prince raped her shortly after the photo was taken. Barely rattled by the news, Prince Andrew tells his secretary to take care of it before promptly telling the staffer to fuck off. Eight years later, amid the never-ending broadcasts about Brexit, news of Epstein’s death thrusts the infamous photo, Giuffre’s allegations and Prince Andrew back into the spotlight.

In its first episode, “A Very Royal Scandal” unpacks Maitlis and Prince Andrew’s inner lives, showcasing how they would eventually converge for the explosive interview. After 20 years at the BBC, Maitlis is itching to report on something other than the U.K.’s chaotic government. When the prince’s team pitches a short segment on his charity work, she sees it as an opportunity for him to address the photo, his friendship with Epstein and the sexual assault allegations Giuffre has made against him.

For his part, Prince Andrew is living in his own world, which is precisely what led to his downfall. Sheen’s portrayal is that of a pampered and ill-tempered man who weaponizes his close relationship with his mother; outwardly hates his elder brother, Charles and seems content only when hunting, golfing or conversing with his daughters, Princesses Beatrice (Honor Swinton Byrne) and Eugenie (Sofia Oxenham). Surrounded by “yes people,” including Thirsk and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson (Claire Rushbrook), the series showcases how easily Prince Andrew dug his grave and sealed his coffin shut.

Though the interview is the turning point in the narrative, and takes place in Episode 2, it’s not what’s most intriguing about the show. Instead, amid the muted tones of the palace and the haunting sounds of a clock ticking in the background, “A Very Royal Scandal” offers a master class in perception. In addition to his predatory behavior, the Duke of York’s arrogance and entitlement are catalysts for his disgrace. The show highlights how insulated the royal family — specifically, the prince — had been and how his inability to step outside of his understanding of himself leads to his destruction while ricocheting into his daughters’ lives.

The series gives the audience a deep dive into royal affairs, but in some ways, Maitlis feels like a secondary character. Her family, insomnia and journalistic processes are all depicted, but though Maitlis is an executive producer of “A Very Royal Scandal,” the show doesn’t divulge more aspects of her life. For example, though it’s mentioned briefly in Episode 3, her experience of being a victim of stalking by a former friend isn’t explored here. In her portrayal, though, particularly in the interview scene, Wilson presents a woman who cares deeply about her work. The show also highlights the persistence and meticulousness needed to draw in subjects, and get them to respond to tough questions.

Though much of the world has either seen or at least heard of Prince Andrew’s BBC interview, “A Very Royal Scandal” is still fascinating. Moreover, though the British royals have certainly become less mysterious in recent years, depicting the wealth, privilege and inner workings of The Firm unveil how people like Prince Andrew manage to thrive for so long. As the series illustrates, with a system working as a shield, perpetrators are often only stopped when they boldly and proudly reveal themselves as monstrous.

“A Very Royal Scandal” premieres Sept. 19 on Prime Video.