Posted in: Amazon Studios, BBC, TV | Tagged: A Very Royal Scanda, amazon studios, bbc, Emily Maitlis, michael sheen, prince andrew, ruth wilson, The News Agents

A Very Royal Scandal Trailer; Michael Sheen on Tackling Prince Andrew

Prime Video released a trailer for A Very Royal Scandal and Michael Sheen had a very meta interview with Emily Maitlis for her podcast.

Amazon Studios has released a new trailer for A Very Royal Scandal, the new Prime Video miniseries about that disastrous BBC interview Prince Andrew had with BBC journalist Emily Maitlis about his friendship with Jeffery Epstein. If there's one thing the British love, it's a right Royal Trainwreck, and this one paid off in spades. The new series stars Michael Sheen as the disgraced prince and Ruth Wilson as Emily Maitlis and will premiere on Amazon Prime on September 19th. The series retelling runs three episodes and will revisit the 2019 interview that effectively brought down the prince and ended his role in public life. "Randy Andy" became "Creepy Andy" forevermore.

As the official synopsis for A Very Royal Scandal goes, "One night. One hour. One interview that sent shockwaves around the globe. Based on the real-life 2019 interview between Emily Maitlis and Prince Andrew over the scandalous accusations he faced regarding his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein and Virginia Giuffre. A Very Royal Scandal follows the actions of Maitlis and Prince Andrew in the lead-up to the interview, the ground-breaking event itself, and the many questions left in its wake that would change their lives forever."

A Very Royal Scandal and the Meta Media Hall of Mirrors

Sheen was interviewed on The News Agents, Maitlis's podcast with Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall, in a weirdly meta moment. Here he was being interviewed by the real Emily Maitlis about a fictionalised version of her interview in A Very Royal Scandal. Sheen said that his process when he plays a real-life figure is always to figure out if the story is being told in a responsible, appropriate and trustworthy manner.

"Because once I start the process of playing the character, I have to put all my personal opinions aside, and my job is to try and make that character as real as possible," he said. "So, when it comes to a story like this, obviously, where there's a mystery at the heart of it, we don't know. There hasn't been a legal case. We don't know definitively what happened or what didn't happen, what he did or what he didn't do… And, of course, that's incredibly rare. When I come to play a character, I usually know the most important things about that character. The central, most important thing about this character, I didn't know."

Sheen said he would never tell anyone whether he believed Prince Andrew was guilty or not.

"When we did certain key scenes, I said, 'Right, I'm going to give you a take now which is leaning this way a bit,' and, 'I'm going to give you a take, which is leaning this way a bit now,'" he explained. "I still knew I had to sort of change little things in my head, do a bit of mental acrobatics in my head, so I wasn't changing what I thought, but essentially what was going on for him. But I just leaned a few different ways."

A Very Royal Scandal premieres on Amazon Prime on September 19th.

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