Emily Maitlis says Prince Andrew ‘lost respect’ after interview

Emily Maitlis says the Duke of York has “lost the respect of the nation” after her infamous Newsnight interview with him, but warned Jeffrey Epstein’s victims were denied closure.

“I think there’s unfinished business,” the journalist told BBC News. “It’s not a nice, neat ending.”

The 2019 interview, generally seen as a “car accident”Prince Andrew spoke candidly to Maitlis about his friendship with convicted sex offender Epstein.

It is now the subject of a new three-part drama, A Very Royal Scandal, starring Ruth Wilson as Maitlis and Michael Sheen as Andrew.

The BBC interview did great damage to Andrew’s reputation and is seen by many as a major contributor to his downfall.

Days afterthe Duke announced he would step down from royal duties, saying the Epstein scandal was a “major disruption” to the royal family.

Maitlis spoke to me, along with Wilson, at the Ham Yard Hotel in central London, not far from where Newsnight is broadcast, the broadcaster’s Broadcasting House.

Her interview, which made headlines around the world, was broadcast in a special Saturday evening edition of the program in 2019.

Prince Andrew discussed his ties to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the socialite now serving a prison sentence for helping Epstein abuse girls.

Andrew used the interview to emphatically deny having sex with then 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre, saying he was in Pizza Express in Woking on the day the meeting was supposed to take place.

The Duke subsequently reached a financial settlement with Mrs Giuffre, formally ending the relationship. a civil case filed against him in the US.

The out-of-court settlement did not admit any liability and Prince Andrew has always strongly denied claims of wrongdoing.

It was reported on Monday that the Duke will have to pay his own expenses whether he would like to stay at the Royal Lodge country house in Windsor.

When Maitlis reflected on the impact of the interview, he said that in a sense “it changed everything”.

“Prince Andrew lost his royal duties, he lost his uniform, he lost the respect of the nation and it became, I think, much more difficult for him to maintain his place in the royal family,” she said.

“And on the other hand, we don’t know if Epstein’s victims got anything out of it. We don’t know if their lives were fundamentally changed,” she added.

“There was no trial. There was a settlement… but we didn’t have that sense of closure there,” she said.

She said she sometimes wondered if it was “more than a moment.”

“Can you, as a journalist, do more than just ask questions and see what changes that brings?” she asked.

She said that’s why the third episode of the new series, which focuses on the consequences, is so important.

“It’s about reckoning. It’s about fallout. But it’s not a nice, neat ending with a comedic villain or some kind of swashbuckling hero. It doesn’t end neatly.”

Maitlis also revealed that a month after her November 2019 interview, she was “pulled aside” by someone close to King Charles, who was then the Prince of Wales.

She said the person simply said, “HRH was not unhappy with the interview.”

BBC News has not been able to verify these comments. But Maitlis says she spent years “trying to puzzle out” what the words meant.

She speculated that it could mean Charles didn’t “blame” her for the interview. “You’re not going to the Tower,” she said.

“Or it could somehow mean that it was not inconvenient for the reorientation between the royal family and the British public.”

Maitlis said that if you look at the shape of the monarchy since then, it has become “leaner”.

“I can still remember the Queen’s speech at Christmas. There were just a few pictures on the piano and I felt like something had changed,” she said.

“And so I think back to the words that I heard in, you know, December 2019, and I wonder if that was the beginning of the reset.”

In the series, Wilson wore a wig and blue contact lenses to resemble Maitlis.

The actress said it was “absolutely amazing” to play Maitlis, adding: “I got to be blonde, and blondes have more fun. I loved it.”

She hired a voice coach and a movement coach and studied Maitlis ‘intensively’ – including on the job – to be able to put herself in her character’s shoes.

“I loved getting involved and seeing behind the scenes of how that world works. That was what initially attracted me to the project,” she said.

Maitlis said Wilson had managed to capture her “impatience”, including the way she eats her sandwiches quickly.

“And she kind of put some comedy into the movement that I had,” she said.

“I wouldn’t recognize it myself, but I suddenly saw it through Ruth and thought it was true. I always spill things. I always drop things. I always overfill a handbag.

“There’s a kind of chaos in my life off-screen, I think, that Ruth had just watched and seamlessly brought in without ever having to say it. And so it was remarkable, really.”

The Amazon Prime series comes just months after a rival dramatisation of the 2019 Newsnight interview, Scoop, has been released on Netflix.

That version starred Rufus Sewell as Prince Andrew, Gillian Anderson as Emily Maitlis and Billie Piper as producer Sam McAlister.

But while Scoop focused on the role McAlister played in obtaining the interview, A Very Royal Scandal focuses on Maitlis’s own role in the process.

Maitlis, executive producer of the new series, is diplomatic when asked about McAlister’s version, stressing that they are “completely different animals”.

But she said there were elements in Scoop she didn’t recognize, including scenes where she and her gray greyhound Moody were in the office.

“I’m really sorry to disappoint you,” she said. “In my perfect world, dogs would be everywhere, but Moody has never been to the Newsnight studio.”

But even Maitlis’ version took creative liberties.

She pointed to a scene in which her husband snores on screen while she sits next to him, furiously typing on her phone.

“I have to say I haven’t snored, in my marriage or in the bedroom,” she notes.

The entire Newsnight interview is still available easy to view online.

Which begs the question: do we need a dramatization, or maybe even two, when you can just watch the real version?

“The interview lasted one hour, one moment, one day, one year,” Maitlis said.

“And (the drama) is actually a series of consequences, outcomes and side effects that we are only just beginning to understand.

“I still don’t think the story itself is finished, but this is the closest you can get to really understanding where it began, and what it did to all of us.”

A Very Royal Scandal will be released on Prime Video on September 19.