A Very Royal Scandal unpacks Prince Andrew’s disastrous TV interview

Prince Andrew may not wish to remember that evening, but every Brit can recall the cringe-inducing nightmare of justice and schadenfreude that was the Duke of York’s interview with BBC’s Newsnight. The train-wreck sit-down, wherein the Prince tried to deny claims that he had sex with a victim of notorious predator Jeffrey Epstein, destroyed his already wavering public image and led to him exiting the frontlines of the royal family. Moments this impactful certainly deserve the prestige-adaptation treatment, and this story is so juicy that it’s gotten two: the Netflix movie Scoop, released earlier this year, and now Prime Video’s A Very Royal Scandal, a TV drama about the before, during, and after of that infamous interview.

Spread across three episodes, A Very Royal Scandal covers much of the same ground as Scoop: The news of Epstein’s arrest and subsequent death inspires renewed interest in the Prince’s friendship with him; his team seeks to quash the scandal lest it negatively impacts his dear mother; and Newsnight, a bastion of British journalism, scrambles to secure the interview before its rivals. The key difference here is perspective. Where Scoop was told from the point of view of former Newsnight producer Sam MacAlister, this is centered on Emily Maitlis, the journalist who conducted the interview. As played by Ruth Wilson (complete with a sharp blonde bob and a deepened voice that more evokes Elizabeth Holmes than Maitlis), she is ambitious but stifled by the BBC’s rules of impartiality. Attaining an interview with the beleaguered Duke is as much an opportunity for her to sink her teeth into a challenge as an old-school journalistic scoop. The machinations around securing the sit-down make for some process-laden fun, as every side fights for their agenda.

Where Scoop had Rufus Sewell play Andrew under a mound of admittedly impressive prosthetics, Michael Sheen has eschewed makeup in favor of some dusty gray-white hair and his own innate ability to blend smarm with charm. Having developed a niche or playing real-life figures whose PR polish has rendered them uncanny to the greater public (Tony Blair, Chris Tarrant, David Frost), Sheen is a strong fit for the Duke. Here is a man who is both staggeringly entitled and curiously powerless, a literal prince whose place in the pecking order falls lower with each passing year. His devoted press secretary Amanda Thirske (Joanna Scanlan) talks of his warmth and charisma but any evidence of that is absent in Sheen’s portrayal of a middle-aged man who throws tantrums like a toddler and refers to the Queen as “mummy.” 

Scoop had the airing of the interview act as the satisfying climax to its story, the hurrah to a job well done, which always left it feeling maddeningly incomplete. A Very Royal Scandal savvily dedicates its final episode to the fallout. Embarrassing an accused sex offender is one thing; getting accountability is quite another. That means they drop many of the biopic clichés, like having every actor do over-mannered impersonations of their real-life subjects (the exception being John Hopkins, who seems to be playing Jeffrey Epstein with a rubbery party mask). The issue of Prince Andrew’s guilt is not the concern of this series (although it certainly doesn’t portray him as a glowing innocent in this abhorrent situation). Rather, the focus is on revealing how due process is but a pipe dream when your opponent is steeped in the privileges of money and power. It’s satisfying to embarrass the guilty, but then what? Scoop ends on a note of pride for the work of good journalism. Yet A Very Royal Scandal is pragmatic about how it’s still not enough in the face of corruption, especially when your opponents are funded by the crown.

Andrew is the wormy villain of the piece, but he’s also defanged by his falling status. The true power players are the press secretaries and stooges of the Queen, slimily calm old men in suits whose jobs entail cleaning up the messes of the Windsor clan. It truly drives home how little concern practically everyone involved, including Maitlis’ team, seemed to have for the innumerable victims of Epstein. The most powerful person in the flock, it seems, is the Queen’s private secretary, one of the “old gray men” that Princess Diana warned of (played by Alex Jennings). He hovers over the interview prep like a smarmy middle manager, talking of the royals like they’re overgrown toddlers who cannot be trusted to fold their own underwear let alone hold a conversation with a commoner. He might be the most insidious figure in the series not named Jeffrey Epstein: a highly competent worker who doesn’t meddle in a sexual-assault allegation because it’s his job to make such things go away. 

It’s all sturdy stuff, the kind of well-made and juicy true-life drama that is the bread and butter of British entertainment. If only it hadn’t fallen foul to the prevailing sickness of modern prestige TV: gloomy and muddy cinematography that is dull at best and outright imperceptible at worst. Our kingdom for some good lighting.

While it’s a far more satisfying version of this story than the one retold in Scoop, A Very Royal Scandal may suffer from coming out second and relitigating (very recent) history. If we were all there to see the real thing unfold the first time around, then watched the movie version, is there an audience who wants more? Then again, as the current King seeks to keep his brother out of the spotlight to draw attention away from his very serious alleged crimes, maybe we—and they—can use a reminder that not all problems can be spun away.

A Very Royal Scandal premieres September 19 on Prime Video