When Prince Andrew sat down with Emily Maitlis for a now-infamous Newsnight interview, he did so intending to clear his reputation - but his life would never be the same again after it aired.
The 45-minute bombshell chat covered sexual assault allegations - which he strongly denies - in great detail and probed his friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The grilling from Maitlis saw the Duke of York make a series of bizarre claims that generated a huge amount of public discussion and derision, sending shockwaves across the world.
Andrew was asked directly about Virginia Giuffre, who alleged she was told by Epstein and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell to have sex with the prince at Epstein's mansion in New York and at other locations when she was 17. Giuffre had claimed that at the time she had allegedly met Andrew in a club, he was profusely sweating, but Andrew hit back at this claim suggesting he is medically incapable of sweating.
He also told Maitlis that he had never met the accuser because he at been at a children's party at Woking's Pizza Express branch on the night in question - which caused a frenzy online after the chat aired. However, the Duke had a simple six-word response to the disastrous interview when it was over.
It indicated he had absolutely no idea that in barely any time at all, he would be forced to step down from his royal duties and be sidelined by the monarchy for good. Now dramatised in a new Netflix film - Scoop - it seems that his assessment of his performance in the interview could hardly have been less accurate.
Meghan Markle 'to unleash her own memoirs' as Prince Harry's drops next week
As reported in OK Magazine, once the cameras had stopped rolling the excruciating questions - and answers - had finished, Andrew declared confidently: "I think that went really well". The insight came from photographer Mark Harrison, who had been there snapping pictures of the now-historic interview, that saw King Charles' brother do anything but rehabilitate his image.
"I was blown away by it," Mark reportedly explained about watching Andrew defend himself. "As the viewer would have been seeing it live, I think there were key moments that everybody knows about the sweating and Pizza Express all of these moments".
Mark added that he "caught the eye of the other cameraman on the other side just to kind of make contact with someone, but I just didn't want to do anything dramatic." He added that whilst the Duke believed the whole thing had gone well, the Newsnight team were pretty nervous about undertaking the interview from the get-go: "They said, 'Don't stop filming whatever you do, we will keep filming and there is a chance that Prince Andrew may walk, we don't know what is going to happen'."
Speaking on Talk TV, Harrison noted that there was one moment that left him totally "aghast" as they filmed the interview - when Andrew claimed to have been eating at a Pizza Express on the day he was accused of meeting Giuffre. "I was aghast. Like everyone else was aghast, I suppose, but because it was live, I didn't know what was going to come next. I had my hand over my mouth at one point."
When it came to the restaurant claim, Mark added: "I thought then, 'That's a headline'. And then another one came and it was like, ‘Oh, that's a headline’. I certainly didn't know it was going to be a headline five years on, but here we are."
Giuffre later brought a civil claim against Andrew but it was later settled out of court. The settlement contained no admission of liability, guilt or wrongdoing on Prince Andrew's part.
Do you have a story to tell? Email: emma.mackenzie@reachplc.com
Read more similar news:
Comments:
comments powered by Disqus
