A Very Royal Scandal: Emily Maitlis, Michael Sheen and Ruth Wilson on recreating famous Prince Andrew interview

At the time, Maitlis worked on BBC Newsnight, and her grilling of Prince Andrew – with questions about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and allegations from Virgina Roberts (now Giuffre) which stated she was coerced into a sexual relationship with the Duke when she was 17 – shocked the world and had a profound impact.

Now, Prime Video series A Very Royal Scandal is telling the story of Maitlis’ journey towards the incredible interview with Andrew, with Luther and Mrs Wilson star Ruth Wilson playing the journalist and Good Omens’ Michael Sheen as the duke.

Ahead of the series – which is executive produced by Maitlis herself – coming to the streaming platform, Wilson, 42, Sheen, 55, and Maitlis, 53 spoke about its production and significance.

Wilson says that, on reading the script, she thought “this story was fascinating because it goes behind-the-scenes of these two public figures.

"What goes on behind-the-scenes for Emily Maitlis, who I hugely respect and have known from TV for years, to see how she is at home, to see how these journalists got this interview, and also to explore why Prince Andrew decided to do this interview.

“I thought it was funny, it was moving, and I had also never played a journalist before. It was really a huge challenge for me, playing a public figure that we all know.”

How was it for Maitlis, having Wilson portray her?

“Objectively, it does feel ridiculous – there’s no doubt about it,” says the journalist. “Ultimately though it’s an extraordinary privilege to have a world-class actress, literally one of Britain’s best, not just playing you but really trying to understand your role, your job, your work, your actions, your voice.

“I’m bowled over, really, that she wanted to take on the role, and I feel incredibly privileged and happy that it was Ruth.”

Sheen, meanwhile, portrayed Andrew.

He said: “Any character that I’m presented with the possibility of playing, I will only play that character if it excites me, if it interests me, and if it challenges me. And obviously, I, like everybody else, was aware of the story, what it was based on, but I, like everybody else, only knew certain bits of it.

“I’d seen the interview when it came out, I knew the controversies around it and the reactions to it, I knew a little about Prince Andrew, having grown up in this country and knowing his reputation and the public profile and all that kind of stuff.

“But then, in reading the scripts, part of what is so compelling about it, is lifting the veil on what’s going on behind-the-scenes.”

Maitlis adds: “I spent quite a lot of time talking to Michael about elements of the interview that you couldn’t get from the actual tape – for example, Andrew’s demeanour before the interview, how happy he was after the interview when we did the walk around Buckingham Palace and other things like that.”

How was it recreating that infamous interview?

Wilson says: “I was worried initially that it might be impossible to recreate – how could we possibly make it as dramatic and full of tension as the real thing?

“So, I was a bit nervous about filming those scenes, but I really came to love it, and it’s ended up being my favourite part of the whole show.

“And I think part of it, Michael might say the same, was because it was pure imitation. There was no embellishment or act of creative storytelling. We were interpreting what was happening in every moment, every gesture.

“It was fascinating… I asked Julian (Jarrold, director) and Jeremy (Brock, screenwriter) if we could perform the interview in story order, to give us a go at doing it two or three times straight through, without cutting it off, as if we were in an interview.

“It felt like a piece of theatre, I loved it.”

It is the second major screen portrayal of the interview this year after Scoop, the Netflix film starring Gillian Anderson as Maitlis and Rufus Sewell as Andrew – though a major focus of that was the story of Sam McAlister, played by Billie Piper, who secured the interview.

What do they hope people take away from watching the three episodes?

Maitlis says: “What I hope the drama does is give viewers the context for why that interview was important in the first place, why we felt that having got the prince into that room for an hour, we just had to ask everything we could because it was a once in a lifetime chance to get his version of events, the opportunity to put to him what the women were saying.

“And I guess there is always a nervousness that somehow you haven’t told the story right, and I think that will carry on haunting us. I hope we’ve done the women justice in the way that they are referenced and portrayed, I hope we’ve done Prince Andrew justice in the way that we’ve tried to understand what was going on in his answers and in his life at the time.

“These things, dramas, are always going to be imperfect, you know, we don’t have all the facts at our disposal, but I hope that it invites people just to understand a little bit more how journalists work and why we felt it was important to try and bring that to a wider audience.”

Sheen adds: “The more we’ve been working on it, it’s become clearer and clearer to me that it’s a story about the dangers of privilege and the dangers of entitlement, both for the person who has that privilege and entitlement but also for the society that is the context for it. And how easy it becomes to exploit people and situations, and to feel justified in doing that somehow. Or to not even think about it too much because you don’t have to, and the injustice in that. And when that happens, it is very difficult for people who have very little privilege and very little power or voice to confront that and to get people to listen.

“So, I hope that an audience will come away from this having had an experience of that and seeing the far-reaching effects. Not only for within this story, but within our culture.”

All three episodes of A Very Royal Scandal are available exclusively on Prime Video from Thursday, September 19.