The journalist who conducted Prince Andrew's car crash BBC Newsnight interview in 2019 has discussed how King Charles reacted to the PR crisis that ended his brother's royal career, ahead of the release of a new three-part drama based on its fallout.
Emily Maitlis, formerly lead anchor on the Newsnight show, sat down with Andrew at Buckingham Palace in November 2019 to discuss his friendship with the late convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein. She has said "somebody close" to King Charles (when he was still Prince of Wales) told her he was "not unhappy" with the interview, which many attribute as the catalyst for Andrew's public downfall.
Speaking on a new episode of web show The News Agents with former Newsnight colleague Lewis Goodall, Maitlis discussed her thoughts on the interview ahead of the release of the Amazon Prime Video show A Very Royal Scandal, which dramatizes the events surrounding it, with Andrew played by Emmy Award-winning actor, Michael Sheen.
The interview was quickly deemed a disaster for Andrew after its broadcast on November 16, 2019. In the episode titled "Prince Andrew & the Epstein Scandal," the prince failed to sufficiently justify maintaining his friendship with the disgraced financier after his conviction of sex offenses and sought to publicly discredit the claims of Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, who alleged that she was forced to have sex with the prince when she was 17.
After the interview, Giuffre launched a sexual assault lawsuit against Andrew in the U.S. The prince has maintained a strong denial of these allegations, and the lawsuit was settled out of court in 2022.
The fallout from the interview was swift. Andrew announced he would step down from his working role within the monarchy "for the foreseeable future" just four days after its broadcast. In 2022, he was further stripped of his honorary military patronages and titles by Queen Elizabeth.
Until now, little has been known about the reaction of King Charles to his brother's public downfall. At the time of the interview, Charles was beginning to take on more responsibility within the monarchy as he prepared for his accession.
Now, Maitlis has suggested that the interview could be viewed as having been useful to Charles during this important transition.
"I was told this odd line by somebody close to Prince Charles about a month after, [I was] taken aside and told that 'HRH was not unhappy with the interview,'" she told Goodall, HRH being the abbreviated form of "His Royal Highness."
"Which could have just meant, 'It's fine, you're not going to be beheaded,' or it could have meant that it served a purpose," she continued.
"That it served a purpose for an incoming monarch who wanted all that noise to go away and actually wanted to reset the relationship between the monarchy and the British public.
And maybe, [the interview] was one of the queen's last big decisions before Covid, and I wonder whether it was considered by those around Charles to be a bad decision."
Newsweek approached Buckingham Palace via email for comment.
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