‘A Very Royal Scandal’ Stars Michael Sheen and Ruth Wilson on Why That Car-Crash Prince Andrew Interview Made for Such Jaw-Dropping TV: ‘He Thinks He’s Going to Be in Control of It’
variety.comK.J. Yossman 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.
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.” 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.
Read more on variety.com