BBC Newsnight booker Sam McAlister who booked the infamous interview where Prince Andrew opened up about his relationship with Prince Andrew said she felt the interview was a ‘masterclass’ in giving bad answers.
The disastrous interview Prince Andrew gave in 2019 in response to allegations of sexual misconduct and what happened behind the scenes is now subject of Netflix drama Scoop starring Rufus Sewell as Andrew and Gillian Anderson as journalist Emily Maitlis, who grilled the prince for the BBC’s “Newsnight" program.
The interview, McAlister told All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly, took more than a year to set up.
The interview was termed as a public relations disaster.
His choice to participate in an interview discussing his connections to a sex offender was risky, as royals typically avoid such scrutiny in the UK.
He categorically denied having sex with Virginia Roberts Giuffre. But newspapers and social media commentators in the UK and across the world criticised him for defending his friendship with Epstein and for failing to show empathy for the convicted sex-offender’s victims.
“It was a double opportunity: a human opportunity to return to the life he had, and a royal opportunity to basically restore his reputation in some ways. So I feel it was those two things that made this really a dream opportunity, at least on paper, for him," McAlister told Kelly.
The BBC’s Emily Maitlis grilled Andrew on the details of an alleged encounter with Virginia Roberts Giuffre in March 2019, when Giuffre said she dined with the prince in London, danced with him at the Tramp nightclub, then had sex with him at a house in the tony London neighbourhood of Belgravia.
“I can absolutely categorically tell you it never happened," Andrew said during the interview recorded and broadcasted on 2019 by BBC Newsnight.
“It really was a masterclass in how to give terrible answers and, from my tiny perspective, a small, personal masterclass in showing no emotion whatsoever on your face for an hour — one of the longest hours in television history, I would say," McAlister further added.
During the interview, Prince Andrew defended his friendship with Epstein prior to the Florida case but said he regretted staying at the financier’s home in Manhattan after Epstein’s conviction.
“That’s the bit, that … I kick myself for, on a daily basis, because it was not something that was becoming of a member of the royal family. And we try to uphold the highest standards and practices and I let the side down, simple as that," he said.
McAlister said it was the ‘scoop of scoops’. “It was really journalistically, obviously, the highlight of my career and quite an extraordinary experience. I knew it was a scoop, but I just did not know it was the scoop of scoops," she said.
Andrew, following the controversy, had stepped back from royal duties and was also stripped of his honorary military titles and roles and leadership of various charities known as royal patronages. He also can no longer use the title “his royal highness" in official settings.
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