November 16, 2019 marked a pivotal moment in the recent history of the British royal family. On that ill-fated day, the BBC’s flagship news program, Newsnight, aired an hour-long interview between journalist Emily Maitlis and Prince Andrew, the Duke of York. The interview, which swiftly turned the prince into a meme sensation for all the wrong reasons, ultimately led to his eventual removal from royal duties and ex-communication from public life.
Amazon’s three-part series A Very Royal Scandal, executive-produced by Maitlis and directed by Julian Jarrold, dramatizes the events leading up to, during, and following that interview. It focuses specifically on allegations that Andrew (Michael Sheen) engaged in sexual relations with a minor, who was trafficked by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein (John Hopkins). Given how recent and well-documented these events are, one might wonder what a dramatization like this could add to the public record. Unfortunately, the answer is not very much.
The first two episodes attempt in vain to inject suspense around whether Andrew will agree to the BBC interview while other news organizations clamor for the world exclusive. A reoccurring motif of ticking clocks and Maitlis (Ruth Wilson) either rushing to appointments on precarious heels or jogging through London is a flimsy attempt at conveying the high stakes involved in nabbing such a high-profile sit-down with a member of the royal family.
Maitlis is portrayed as a somewhat scatterbrained albeit serious journalist, constantly running late and misplacing shoes as she juggles work and family, while Andrew comes across as boorish, offensive, and woefully disconnected from the real world. Among Sheen’s several excellent impersonations of real-life figures in both television and film, his interpretation of Prince Andrew as a petulant uncle feels phoned-in and thinly sketched.
In the end, A Very Royal Scandal barely scratches the surface of Andrew’s opaque relationship with Epstein, offering little more than a few brief flashbacks to the two interacting, with only passing mention made to the prince’s financial entanglement with the financier. It’s only in the last of the three episodes that the series touches on anything that could be described as revelatory. While receiving an award for Network Presenter of the Year, a crowd member confronts Maitlis, shouting, “What about the victims?” This moment prompts a brief examination of the media’s use of “gotcha” interviews as a ratings boon.
As a woman who once had a stalker, Maitlis shows a fleeting moment of empathy for Epstein’s victims, but the series offers only hints that an ethical internal struggle informed her decision to eventually resign from the BBC. More compelling is the suggestion that Andrew himself is a victim, as some of his supporters claimed him to be following Maitlis’s “hatchet job.” Yet, the avalanche of bad press and public mockery Andrew endures does little to make us sympathize with a man who’s painted as nothing more than a self-aggrandizing and self-pitying prince.
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