Transcription
Now, broadcaster Emily Matless's jaw-dropping interview with Prince Andrew for BBC Newsnight back in 2019, probing him on his friendship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, remains one of the most significant television moments in history. Emily is now behind a new three-part drama that explores the interview, which obviously changed the relationship between the monarchy and the British public forever, particularly of course for Andrew. And Emily Matless joins us now. Very good morning to you. Thanks. Nice to see you.
This is the story of one of the most significant interviews in television history, and in fact, in constitutional royal history as well. Do you sometimes think to yourself, "Can't believe that I was the one who did it"?
I think that the whole time. Do you? I actually think the whole... I mean, when I, when I watch clips or when I watch the drama, I start getting a palpitation again, as if something different is going to happen this time around. Will I remember to ask the right question? Will this go according to plan? It's as if you're sort of taken right back to that Thursday afternoon in November 2019, and I, I feel like I'm reliving it from the beginning.
At what point in the actual interview, the real interview, as you were doing it, at what point did you think, "Oh my God, this interview is going to make history"?
I realized very early on that he was going to be very candid about his responses. And when we'd been role-playing, we'd been sort of, of Ro, role-playing in the BBC. And I kept on getting a lot of pushback from my editor. This is where you and your editor sit down, we sort of pretend to take on the roles, you know. And, and she make it, she pretended to be Prince Andrew and she said, "Emily, how dare you ask questions of a senior royal like that? Don't you think it's beneath the BBC to be asking questions?" So I was expecting him to push back, push back, push back. And so as soon as he said, "Yes, this is about Epstein, this is about my friendship, this is about what I was doing," I kind of thought, whatever he says now. And we never presumed guilt. We never sort of went in saying, guilt or innocent. We just, we wanted to hear him speak, you know. What, what we had promised our audience, and what he had promised us, was an hour of his own words. And that's all it was meant to be about. And as soon as he said, "Yeah, I'm going to talk about this," I thought, it's going to make history. Whatever, whatever he says. Yeah. It doesn't matter what he says because this is an extraordinary position, you know, for a journalist in a royal to be in, frankly. Yeah.
What do you feel that you ended up with at the end of that hour? Because I know that you, as you were conducting it, you realized you were doing something not for your personal aggrandizement, but actually you had a responsibility, almost legally, that this interview was an on-the-record account of whatever had happened between him and Epstein.
I think we realized that we would only, only get one shot at this. And I mean, all of us, you know, would get one shot at hearing from the Prince. And so as Meen, my editor at the time, was very serious about saying, "This has got to be a document of public record. It's got to be usable, you know, if it goes to court, if it goes to trial, if it's part of an extradition process, you have got to ask the questions that essentially build up the picture." It was quite forensic like that. And so, you know, I rewatch it and realized that the initial questions were what I'd call like foundation questions. They were just establishing, "Were you on the plane? Were you on the island? Did you go there? Did you stay with him there?" You're just trying to build up a picture. It wasn't about opinion, it wasn't about, you know, "How did you feel?" or "Why did you do that?" It was just getting the facts right because we always knew that it might, you know, it might end up in a court of law.
He gave you the most extraordinary answers to your questions. The answer about not sweating, for example, the Pizza Hut in Woking answer, um, the fact that he was an honorable man, and that's why he'd spent four nights at Epstein's house after Epstein had been convicted of his awful crimes. Can I ask you a straight question? When the director said, "Cut," did you think this man has been lying to me?
I thought that he had tried very hard to remember his lines. And I know that that's a very interesting answer because he, at the end of the interview, and this is something that we show in the drama, that I don't, I, I don't think we, we talked about much at the time, was that he asked for certain extra bits to be recorded. And one of the things that we found quite complicated was the dilemma as a journalist, if somebody asks you to drop something in, is that it? You know, are tempering with it? Are you tampering with it? Or are you, you know, you're, you're disturbing the chronology of the hour that you've just recorded? And so one of the scenes that, um, we have in the drama, um, which actually was much more, you know, much more sort of a team sort of debate, it was never sort of one against another, but it was the team debate, was how do we feel if we're putting in these extra pieces? And on the one hand, well, he's asked you to do that. He asked you to put in the sweating thing afterwards. You know, he asked to expand upon the Pizza Express alibi afterwards. And so we felt we couldn't ignore his wishes. But it left us feeling slightly vulnerable, I think, as journalists that we'd, we'd sort of come back and and put extra things in, you, um, afterwards.
And it has been now almost five years since this interview. You've left the BBC. Uh, you must have had contact with people who know the royals, or even with royals themselves. Yeah. Um, what have you heard about reaction to that interview? And particularly, we've been saying throughout the program that King Charles himself might have had a view on that interview that you gave. You an insight into how he felt about it?
It was a very curious form of words, um, that I felt I was being told years ago, right? I mean, just after the interview, and I was sort of pulled aside, and the phrasing was, "HRH Roan was not unhappy with the interview." Was not unhappy. Now, I went away and I just spent years actually thinking about that. Now, on the one hand, maybe I shouldn't make too much of it. Maybe he just meant, "Oh, you're fine. You're not going to the town, you know, you're okay. Don't worry about it." Because there was quite a lot of press around it. And it might have just been a reassurance that, you know, "We get it. That's how journalism and, and the free press in this country worked." But when I look back and I look at the realignment now of what's happened, and there has been a shift, hasn't there? I mean, we can all see from the very first Christmas that the Queen had those slimmed-down photos on her piano. And now you look at what's happening in terms of Andrew's relationship with his brother, um, the whole question of his house now, what's going on, and whether he's, you know, got to move out. And it is a slimmed-down monarchy. And I, part of me just wonders whether in that message, I was being told, "We're beginning a reset now between parts of the monarchy and the British public." You know, it was almost as if, "We've heard what the British public think of this."
Emily, what's your take on the fact that this man, after that hour-long interview, and after you'd done the extra bits, said to you that he thought it had all gone rather well, when it should have been obvious to anybody, really, and it was certainly obvious to his age watching, we know that they were pale with horror at what had just happened? What does it say about him, in your assessment, that he thought it had gone well?
Well, what we do in the drama, in, in *A Very Royal Scandal*, is we set up the clash, essentially, between these two great institutions, you know, the BBC, public broadcasting, and the Palace. And you just see them as different worlds, you know. You see the journalists on their own sort of, you know, timing, which is impatience and speed, and, you know, everything goes super quickly. And then you see the Palace, which moves at a very formal, stately, ceremonial pace. And I think what, what we learned from that is that's a clash, you know, it's a clash of cultures. He, he felt it had gone well because, quite frankly, for a royal to be able to air anything about their life, it's pretty rare. He doesn't have Twitter, he doesn't have Instagram, he doesn't have a right of reply. And we all know that sense of doing an interview and, and the adrenaline's kind of coursing around your, your body, right? You sort of have that cortisol zone high of like, "What did I say? What have I, what did I say? What, what did I say? Or did I sound okay?" I think he was doing that in his head. And we know that he was happy because we got extra time with him after the interview. He went for a walk around the Palace, didn't you? We literally got the guided tour. You know, "This is where my mother, you know, her late Queen, the late Queen has her offices. This is where we're going to do our shots. This is Prince Albert, my, you know." He invited me back. He said, "Next time you come." Now, you don't say that to somebody if you're absolutely reeling and furious. So I think there was a sense from him and from his closest aides that it was job done. And I think that kind of shows the, just the different worlds, you know, the different worlds of coming together.
The interview destroyed him. It completely destroyed him. It destroyed him almost as a man, let alone as a monarch. Well, not a monarch, but a member of the Royal Family. Do you feel guilty about that?
I do worry. I mean, I, I, I worry. Actually, I worry about one of the things we've done is we've shown. I mean, the interview itself sits in the middle of the three parts, and we've shown the fallout. And actually, there was fallout for a lot of people in that. There was fallout, obviously, for Andrew at the center of it, because of losing status and, you know, a lot of respect from the British public and royal duties. And there was fallout for people around him, you know. And there was fallout, we, we look at the family. And so, do you feel sorry for him? I, I feel, you know, I, I feel concerned, as I would for anyone who had seen a real, you know, drop in status. I don't feel sorry that I did the interview, but of course, there's concern. And I think that concern has to go deeper, has to say, "Well, where did that leave the victims of Epstein, right?" You know, that is, there's a concern that we didn't, there was no closure there. There is no trial. I mean, there was a settlement for one of them, but it hasn't concluded anything that necessarily makes their lives better. We asked quite searching questions about whether that was, you know, anything more than a moment of television. It changed his life. Did it change their lives? What about the women closest to him? What about, you know, the, and his ex-wife, and his daughters? And I think there were ramifications, there were reverberations that we're still trying to work out today, actually.
Yeah. You are no longer part of the BBC. I used to work at the BBC as well, of course. Um, you must be as shocked and horrified as everyone about what happened to Hugh Edwards? Yeah. And, you know, the fact that he's ended up convicted of this terrible crime. And this, it's a completely different, uh, crime. And of course, Prince Andrew never convicted of a crime, never admitted liability for anything, came to a settlement, of course, with his alleged victim. What are your reflections on Hugh today, in this huge week?
I'm horrified. You know, I think we're all horrified. Um, I worked with Hugh on elections. Um, I'd sort of say hi to him, you know, he's a, a colleague that would do the 10 o'clock finish, I'd do Newsnight. So he was somebody I'd say hi to. Um, I was absolutely... It leaves you speechless, doesn't it? It leaves you speechless. Someone that you, you've worked with could be responsible for something like that. Yeah. I think it's a real, it's kind of, it's a real deep breath moment, isn't it? Isn't it just?
Um, your drama goes out tomorrow. There was an earlier version of, of what happened that went out a few months ago. There was the interview itself. So that's three punches to the head, basically, for Andrew, isn't it? Three. Now, do you think that's it? Do you think it's time to leave him alone?
Uh, I mean, I don't think it's in our hands, you know, what happens next. We made a drama because we wanted to try and put in context everything that had happened, not just the interview itself. You know, the interview has been watched by 10 million people. You can go back, you can have a look. And I hope it will send more people to have a look at, at the drama, at the interview itself. But actually, we, it was important to put the interview right at the center of these three, three hours of television and say, "This is going to be a story about consequences as well. This is going to be a story about fallout, reverberations, and repercussions." And I think that's what we're trying to do here. We're trying to take, you know, a moment to stand back. It's nearly five years. We've got the perspective now that we didn't have when we just finished the interview. And I think we're learning things about the monarchy, about our own relationship ship with the monarchy as a result of this. Maybe it was a, a process that it kick-started.
Emily, it's the first time you and I have met. I know you two are, are all friends, but, um, I have to say to you that congratulations. It was, it was a masterpiece of an interview. It really was. It was flawless. And it's now the drama, *A Very Royal Scandal*. And where can people see it?
Amazon Prime, from tomorrow. From tomorrow. Yeah.
Thank you, Emily. Great to see you.
Thank you very much indeed.