TV host opens up about disastrous Prince Andrew interview that led to his downfall

Aug 18, 2023

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The BBC journalist who sat down with Prince Andrew in 2019 for his infamous “car crash” Newsnight interview has opened up about the aftermath of his revelations.

Emily Maitlis, 52, probed the Duke of York, 63, on his alleged friendship with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, over which he has long been scrutinized.

And the scandal-scarred royal’s responses during the hour-long special ultimately led to his fall from grace, resulting in his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II., stripping him of his royal and military honors.

Maitlis, however, claimed she never intended to “ruin his life” with her questions and remains “proud” of how it played out.

“I knew I had to do an interview that would hold up in a court of law once we had the chance there could not be a misstep,” Maitlis told The Mirror. “It felt like a trial.”

Maitlis said the sit-down special “changed [Andrew’s] life more profoundly than he’d ever anticipated.”

“He lost a lot from doing that interview,” she told the publication. “My intention was not to ruin his life. That was not on my radar. I am really proud of the interview itself actually.”

“I am proud of the team, of what we did, how we got it and what we put on air,” she added.

And even though the blowback from the interview was severely damaging to Andrew, Maitlis defended his decision to speak out.

“Andrew is a big presence. He’s a big chap and has a very sort of booming deep voice and very charming, and he was confident of what he had,” she told the outlet.

“This is a man who thought he was innocent of all of the allegations about having trafficked sex, having befriended a pedophile, and he wanted to convince the world that he was innocent. But I do understand that one of the many difficulties with being royal is you don’t get that right of reply.”

“You don’t get to tweet out if you don’t like a story. So I could see why he would want to talk to us. I knew that if they said yes, it would be the most extraordinary piece of television that I’d ever made and possibly that he had too,” she added.

Andrew, who was barred from using his HRH (“His Royal Highness”) moniker following his association with Epstein, also lost his patronages last year.

While Andrew is still a Royal Knight of the Garter and a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, he was told face-to-face by his mother that he would no longer be known as His Royal Highness.

The monarch, who was 96 when she died in September, broke the news to the father of two at Windsor Castle in January last year. That same month, she also took away his military titles.

The retraction of Andrew’s official royal labels came amid his sexual assault case filed by Virginia Giuffre, who has long claimed that Epstein made her have “disgusting” sex with the royal three times, starting in 2001 when she was just 17.

Andrew’s lawyers say he “unequivocally denies Giuffre’s false allegations against him.” He settled the case out of court for an undisclosed sum last February.

Most recently, Andrew has been chucked out of Buckingham Palace by his monarch brother, King Charles.