A Very Royal Scandal exposes sick question Prince Andrew asked Emily Maitlis before infamous Newsnight interview – leaving BBC star reeling

Emily Maitlis has revealed the embarrassing question she was asked by Prince Andrew before her infamous Newsnight interview with the royal.

The journalist is an executive producer on the upcoming Prime Video series A Very Royal Scandal, a retelling of the 2019 interview.

And in scenes set to air in the first episode, Emily, played by Ruth Wilson, reveals that before agreeing to the terms of his interview with BBC Newsnight, Prince Andrew asked the presenter if she had ever been abused.

While the BBC team attended a pre-show meeting with Prince Andrew, played by Michael Sheen, along with his daughter Beatrice and his private secretary Amanda Thirsk.

And before he agrees to the interview, the Duke leans forward and asks, “Have either of you ever been victims of abuse?”

Visibly shocked by the question, while Emily’s two employees quickly insist they didn’t do it, the journalist herself seems to freeze.

As the silence lingers, she quickly adds, “No.”

Prince Andrew asks, “Nothing in your life?” to which Emily replies, “Nothing that compares.”

“So your judgment would not be colored by anything at all?” clarifies Amanda, played by Joanna Scanlan.

“Not at all,” Emily confirms as the meeting draws to a close.

But the chilling question plays on Emily’s mind and later in the episode she confides to her husband, telling him: “You know, at the end of my meeting with Prince Andrew, he asked me if I had ever been a victim of abuse? It felt horrible.”

“What did you say?” her husband Mark Gwynne asks, to which Emily replies, “Well, nothing. Having a stalker is absolutely nothing like that and I don’t want to talk about it.”

Emily was the victim of stalking for 27 years after Edward Vines began bombarding her with letters, an obsession that had continued since the two went to Cambridge University together in the 1990s.

In 2022, Edward was sentenced to eight years in prison after writing a series of letters from HMP Nottingham in which he declared his ‘unrequited love’ for her with ‘outpourings of affection’.

In March 2023, he was sentenced to a further nine months in prison after also attempting to write a letter to the presenter’s mother.

Vines had insisted that he would continue writing letters to Maitlis until she spoke to him ‘about her behaviour in 1990’ – at which time he claimed that ‘she had ignored him at Cambridge University’.

A court heard that while he was awaiting sentence for breaching his restraining order 20 times, he attempted to write to Maitlis’ mother Marian between July and August 2022.

And the connection between being terrorized by a stalker and Prince Andrew’s question about abuse is clear to see on the actress’s face.

Amazon Prime released the trailer for its upcoming drama A Very Royal Scandal last Wednesday, which will be available on the streamer from September 19.

This came after Emily revealed the awkward request she received from Prince Andrew after their infamous interview ended.

The interview was seen by many as a ‘car crash’ for the Duke of York, but Emily has now revealed that he actually wanted to spend more time talking about sweating and Pizza Express.

Of Prince Andrew’s request, she said: ‘When we finished the interview, I asked out of politeness, “Is there anything that wasn’t recorded that you wanted to discuss?” and Prince Andrew said, “Well, actually there were a few things. You didn’t record my alibi.”

‘He wanted to say that he had been to Pizza Express that evening.

‘And that was a very complicated moment for us, because on the one hand I knew that if he mentioned certain things that he wanted to talk about, for example the sweating and the Pizza Express alibi, that would not help his case. In fact, it would make the case look worse.’

Emily added: ‘I felt a sense of responsibility not to put him in that situation, but on the other hand I also felt a sense of responsibility to bring up the things he had said that he felt were important.’

The News Agents presenter went on to say that it was harder to get interviews after that because it put people off.

“It’s a strange thing, really. You’d think it would be really easy to get people interested in doing an interview because they’ve seen your interview and heard about you,” she said.

‘And on the other hand, nobody wants to do an interview with you, because they saw your interview and heard about you!

“So I think it’s a little bit ambiguous. Some people come to you, and some people run a mile.”