A Very Royal Scandal shines an uncomfortable spotlight on a time the Royal Family would prefer to forget.
From his inaugural ‘f*** off’ to a hapless flunkey, the latest TV retelling of Prince Andrew’s catastrophic Newsnight interview is a brutal portrait of the disgraced Duke.
The November 2019 broadcast that he hoped would clear his name torpedoed his royal career, saw him trapped in a transatlantic court battle with his sex abuse accuser, Virginia Giuffre, and eventually stripped of his HRH title by his own mother.
As a result the three-part Prime Video series – starring Michael Sheen as the Prince and Ruth Wilson as interviewer Emily Maitlis – has been viewed with dread by some in the royal household, with many former staff seen on screen. But just how accurate is it…
From his inaugural ‘f*** off’ to a hapless flunkey the latest TV retelling of Prince Andrew’s catastrophic Newsnight interview is a brutal portrait of the disgraced Duke
The three-part Amazon Prime Video series A Very Royal Scandal has been viewed with dread by some in the royal household, with many former staff seen on screen. Pictured: Andrew portrayed by Michael Sheen and interviewer Emily Maitlis played by Ruth Wilson
The prince
Think of the most arrogant, entitled, buffoonish and obnoxious bore you can. Now double it. Only then might you begin to come close to Sheen’s brilliantly awful portrayal of Prince Andrew.
It’s a characterisation that many of those who worked for the Duke might find familiar.
Unprintable expletives fly from the royal mouth – as they do in real life. I know of one courtier who insists they could almost feel the Prince’s spittle on their face as he once screamed at them: ‘F*** off out of my office and f*** off out of my life’ for daring to offer him some unpalatable advice.
Sheen’s brilliantly awful portrayal of Andrew shows the Prince opting not to watch the interview live but instead to play a game of ‘guess who’ at a dinner party with a Post-It note reading ‘Donald Trump’ stuck to his forehead
In A Very Royal Scandal Andrew boasts that his mother calls him ‘the Palace entrepreneur’. That was most definitely replicated in real life: in a humiliating 2017 interview with The Sunday Times he once boasted of being an ‘ideas factory’ and the Palace’s ‘entrepreneur in residence’.
The dramatisation, meanwhile, sees Sheen’s boorish Prince arrogantly choosing not to watch the interview as it was broadcast but instead playing a game of ‘guess who’ at a dinner party with a Post-It note reading ‘Donald Trump’ stuck to his forehead, pretending to bend over and pass wind.
His high jinks are punctured when ‘Mummy’ comes on the phone having watched it herself. It’s an unlikely scenario since many believe the Queen couldn’t bring herself to see her son so humiliated and was instead briefed by courtiers.
However it is not all one-sided and Sheen portrays some of Andrew’s vulnerability on screen: his devotion to his daughters, his frustration at the maelstrom of accusations he can never fairly defend himself against and the dawning realisation that his gamble has actually pulled the rug from under his feet.
Truth rating: 4/5
The aftermath
Those with intimate knowledge of what took place tell me that Andrew’s self-congratulatory back-slapping in the drama after the interview is spot on.
Relieved that he had made all his planned points – including his remarkable claim that he couldn’t have met his accuser, Virginia Giuffre, because he was at Pizza Express with his daughter – the Prince simply had no comprehension of how badly it had gone.
‘It was a risk and I felt it… thank you, Emily,’ he smiles. Andrew also has some cringeworthy banter with the camera crew, advising them how they should run the wires for their equipment and what the best angles are. ‘100 per cent DoY (Duke of York),’ says one former staffer, through gritted teeth.
Those in the know say that Andrew’s congratulatory slapping on the back after the interview was spot on. Pictured: The interview as depicted in the Prime Video series
Truth rating: 5/5
Royal phones
One howler shows Andrew in the garden at Royal Lodge, mobile phone in hand. A call comes in and the identity of the caller flashes up on the screen: ‘Charles.’
The voice on the end of the phone, belonging to the then Prince of Wales, asks him ‘does Mummy know?’, prompting yet another epic meltdown from the Duke of York.
The King, however, has famously never owned a mobile – he’s a technophobe who only uses a landline – which allows staff to screen his calls.
And due to the strange nature of family relations – plus the fact that the monarch hates personal confrontation – he would be unlikely to call his brother to discuss a matter as contentious as this. Senior royals mostly allow their private secretaries and staff do the talking.
Truth rating: 0/5
Gravel nightmare
A small point but one for true royal fans: Maitlis is shown running chaotically over paving stones to get into the Palace. In reality, the entrance she would have used is covered in red gravel, which is a nightmare for anyone in heels, as I can personally attest.
Truth rating: 0/5
Maitlis interviewing Andrew. In the series, Maitlis is shown running chaotically over paving stones to get into the Palace when it would have been red gravel
His gatekeeper
The Prince’s devoted Private Secretary Amanda Thirsk, who carried the can for much of the interview’s fall-out, is portrayed as a dumpy, rather hapless and out-of-her-depth emotional punchbag for Andrew.
At one point he challenges her to a race in his garden, calls her ‘fatty’ and watches while she gets to her knees to tie his shoelaces.
Which has come as rather a shock to former colleagues of Mrs Thirsk, who point out she was actually a whip-thin ‘ice maiden’ who was Andrew’s de facto chief of staff.
She was, it is true, staunchly – and some might say blindly – loyal to the Queen’s son, perhaps a fatal mistake given his character flaws.
One former colleague tells how Mrs Thirsk started as an office manager and ruthlessly fought her way to the top. ‘She even moved her office right next to the Duke’s, so nothing got past her,’ they claim.
Her frosty demeanour earned her few friends, however. ‘She was loathed by the Queen’s household,’ the source adds. ‘She was a gatekeeper with a capital G.’
Others remember her more charitably. A friend said: ‘Her husband sadly died young and she worked hard to bring up her three girls as a single mother. It wasn’t easy. She had a lot of adversity to deal with.’
It is to her credit, they argue, that she rose to a position of power in a male-dominated and sometimes starchy organisation. Personally, I found her tough but not unfriendly. She was also deeply insecure at times and acutely aware of the enemies lying in wait. As her world crashed down, she was also remarkably magnanimous in defeat.
It was Mrs Thirsk who encouraged Andrew to set up his successful Pitch At Palace scheme, matching entrepreneurs with angel investors, in a bid to restore his reputation after he was forced to quit his role as a roving UK trade ambassador after a string of controversies.
However she also acted as a ‘rogue operator’, bypassing the Palace hierarchy and Press Office in a battle to create an independent empire within the household structure.
Wrongly convinced that the infamous picture of Andrew with a young Virginia Giuffre (then Roberts) had been faked, she employed her own experts to try to prove it. And she was instrumental in setting up his BBC interview, secretly meeting with the Newsnight team at Buckingham Palace and negotiating with the broadcaster before getting Andrew on board and presenting it as a fait accompli to senior courtiers.
Sarah, Duchess of York, later said: ‘This has Amanda Thirsk’s hands all over it’. It was Mrs Thirsk who encouraged Andrew to speak ‘openly and honestly’, believing that wasthe only way to persuade people of his innocence. It led to the royal’s remarkable admission that he could not regret ever meeting convicted paedophile Jeffery Epstein because of the doors the friendship opened to him.
Mrs Thirsk told a friend: ‘The Duke needs all of our support. This is such a brave and honourable thing to do. I really hope the public and media can see his humility, accept his apology and believe his denial. ‘And most importantly allow him to get on with his work.’
Unfortunately, as we know, Andrew showed little in the way of regret and failed to apologise once for his behaviour – or offer any regret for Epstein’s victims.
As the programme depicts, Mrs Thirsk was forced to quit her job as private secretary, although she continued to work for Pitch At Palace until the following year.
Mrs Thirsk was last heard of working for a Chinese e-commerce group – and still won’t hear a word against her former boss, by all accounts.
Truth rating: 2/5
The Courtier
The Queen’s Private Secretary Sir Edward Young is played by Alex Jennings who, confusingly, played Prince Charles in 2006’s The Queen and the current monarch’s uncle, the abdicated King Edward VIII, in Netflix’s The Crown. Jennings plays Sir Edward as a stereotypical senior courtier: old school, snobby and posh.
He certainly looks the part: One source says of the famously tight-lipped aide: ‘He looks like he has a poker up his a***, so perfect casting!’ Other colleagues, however, insist Sir Edward was far from the cliche depicted on screen.
One thing everyone agrees on is that the Palace stalwart, who left last year after two decades working for the late Queen, would never have uttered some of the more outre lines in the show: including a reference to royal ‘kiddie fiddling’, a ‘clusterf*** worthy of the Kardashians’ and wailing they will now be ‘shovelling more s*** than Dyno-Rod’.
The late Queen’s Private Secretary Sir Edward Young in 2021. In the new series he is portrayed by Alex Jennings, who previously played Prince Charles in The Queen and Edward VIII in Netflix’s The Crown
Nor would he ever refer so casually to ‘Charles’, ‘Edward’ or ‘Anne’ (of whom he sighs is ‘on a horse somewhere unreachable’) – he would always call them by their formal title. After all, it was Sir Edward and his team who were later responsible for the late Queen’s elegantly punchy ‘recollections may vary’ remark. So, another pinch of dramatic licence.
In a later scene Sir Edward even goes to Mrs Thirsk’s office before the broadcast demanding to know what ‘leverage’ she has with the BBC to pull the interview and offering to ‘make a call’ himself. All wrong. In truth, the Palace knew the damage was done and was simply preparing its response.
Mrs Thirsk had no power to pull the plug and no one working for the Head of State would have leaned on the national broadcaster to cancel such a significant interview, however bad the outcome was set to be.
Truth rating: 2/5
Andrew’s Exile
In one of the closing scenes, Sir Edward is shown visiting a shamed Andrew to break the news that he wouldn’t be allowed to join the rest of the Royal Family to mark his mother’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022, informing him that Covid would be given as an excuse. In reality it was never intended for the Prince to join his mother on the balcony at Buckingham Palace: that was reserved for working royals.
However he was invited to a thanksgiving service at St Paul’s Cathedral as a consolation, which was in line with the agreement made when he stepped down from official duties, which permitted him to attend larger family functions.
Although Covid was given as the reason for his absence by the Palace, there has been no suggestion he didn’t genuinely have it – and Andrew has attended other royal events since.
A Very Royal Scandal closes with Andrew gazing wistfully out of the window at Royal Lodge at the wreckage of his life.
‘Where do I go? What do I do? Hmmmm. Tell me. What do I do?’ he wails to Sir Edward, who is told by the Duchess of York that she cannot offer him a cup of tea as they have had to let the staff go (another piece of artistic licence).
‘You live with the consequences of your actions, Sir,’ the courtier says, then bows and leaves.
The final image is that damning photograph of Andrew with the then teenage Virginia Roberts, which haunts him to this day. His supporters still insist it is faked.
Truth rating: 1/5
- A Very Royal Scandal is streaming on Prime Video.
