Emily Maitlis on A Very Royal Scandal and the relationship between media and monarchy
The new Prime Video drama debuts this week.
It has been almost five years since the BBC Newsnight team — class of 2019 — sat down with the Duke of York for a television interview that would rock his world and — in different ways — rock ours, too.
Now, a three-part drama on Amazon Prime will take you behind-the-scenes of what was happening inside the BBC newsroom — and bring you our understanding of some of the conversations that were going on in royal circles at that time, behind the hallowed gates of Buckingham Palace.
The writing is fast paced, funny and lays bare both the high-stakes tension and the low-level chaos that went into that journalistic endeavour. Michael Sheen’s superb portrayal of the journey Andrew takes is oddly moving.
From gentle buffoon to social pariah — he’s a man who nevertheless instils huge loyalty and love from the women closest to him. It explores the curious relationship between the media and the monarchy — asking who needs who more — and showing what each side has to fear from a public clash that goes wrong.
But this drama quietly poses another question. In the peerless hands of director Julian Jarrold and producer Josh Hyams, it looks at the power of journalism and, frankly, at its limitations too. The ability to hold to account those at the very top of our public institutions — church, crown, state — is what makes a free press thrive and a democracy healthy.
But five years on, the drama asks — what has fundamentally changed for Jeffrey Epstein’s victims or for Andrew? As Ruth Wilson [playing Maitlis] notes drily: "He’s still at Sandringham for Christmas."
Prince Andrew’s life has changed, of course. Stripped of royal titles, a job, and a wider sense of any public role, you could argue that everything stopped for him after the public reaction to the Newsnight interview.
The duke (or perhaps his mother, Queen Elizabeth) paid undisclosed millions of pounds to settle a civil case with Virginia Giuffre, who accused him of sexually assaulting her on three occasions — opting for a payment rather than a potentially humiliating day in court. Was this a relief to Prince Andrew? Or a victory for Virginia Giuffre? Or did neither feel, ultimately, that they got justice?
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The dramatised interview appears at the centre of the three episodes, but it’s in the last part that we see the full impact, the fallout. While the prince is grappling with a world that has suddenly spun out of his control — where he is being over-managed by PR teams, with ever-more frustrating results — the journalists are asking themselves if they’ve achieved anything more than a “meme moment”. There is no trial, no extradition, no apology and no closure.
One month after the interview aired, I was taken aside by someone close to (then) Prince Charles and told — somewhat cryptically — that "HRH was not unhappy with the interview". The comment stunned me. In the years since, I have returned to that one line so many times in my head, trying to fathom the meaning in the message.
Was I being told that the man who would ascend to the throne just three years later as our king was perhaps relieved that this exchange had taken place? That he could use the opportunity to reorder the monarchy in a way that befitted these times and the public perception of what it should be?
The streamlined, slimmed-down institution as we see it today certainly supports that theory. That symbiotic relationship — between media and monarchy — has rarely been reflected back so starkly. This drama puts that tension at its core.
A Very Royal Scandal will stream on Amazon Prime Video from 19th September 2024 – try Amazon Prime Video for free for 30 days. Plus, read our guides to the best Amazon Prime series and the best movies on Amazon Prime.
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