The making of A Very Royal Scandal: Michael Sheen reveals he ‘struggled’ with ‘intense’ transformation into Prince Andrew – while Emily Maitlis admits she ‘fictionalise’ some details

The creators behind Prime Video’s A Very Royal Scandal have revealed details about the making of the show.

The new series, which is available to stream in the UK today, recreates Emily Maitlis’ journey leading up to her bombshell Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew, 64.

Actress Ruth Wilson, 42, plays the former journalist, 54, in a retelling of the car crash interview with Prince Andrew, played by Michael Sheen, when the royal was quizzed about his friendship with Jefferey Epstein in November 2019, which threatened to damage the reputation of the royal family.

Sheen shared details of how he transformed himself into the duke, and why the role was more complex than others he has previously taken on. 

Elsewhere, Emily Maitlis, who served as the show’s executive producer, revealed that she purposefully made the show ‘less accurate’, despite initially striving for an authentic representation

Talking in the News Agents podcast, Emily revealed why she resisted scriptwriters attempts at maintaining the upmost level of accuracy in the Amazon show.

‘At the beginning, I tried really hard to make everything accurate and real,’ the former Newsnight journalist said.

However, things took a turn when Emily realised that an elevated level of accuracy necessitated her background to be scrutinised.

There are elements of her private life that Emily no doubt wanted to keep out of the public eye, having dealt with stalker who terrorised her for 27 years.

Edward Vines bombarded the News Agents presenter with letters following a fixation that has spanned since the pair attended Cambridge University together in the 1990s and was jailed last year after being found guilty of attempting to breach his restraining order.

Emily, who was born in Canada, also found discomfort in her family life undergoing investigation.

Her family fled Germany following the rise of the Hitler and the Nazi regime – a topic she found herself being asked questions on.

Emily said: ‘They’d come around to my house and we’d have chats such as, “if this was Christmas, would you have a Christmas tree or a Menorah?”‘

Emily Maitlis changed aspects of her private life in the Prime three-part series (pictured: Ruth Wilson and Maitlis)

Sheen, 55, revealed that he felt the most pressure to deliver in the interview scenes (pictured)

‘Initially, I was trying to make it very close to my life and then it struck me, and I thought, “I’m not sure I want to do that”‘.

From then onwards, Emily decided that the show need not have complete accuracy regarding her background and other private aspects of her life.

As a result, she declined to use her home and precise information about her children. She said: ‘I didn’t use my home and we made my children’s ages much younger because it was less naff for them to see portrayals of themselves’.

Meanwhile, Michael Sheen, the actor portraying Prince Andrew in the three-part series, has shared details of how he prepared himself to play the ‘intense’ role. 

The 55-year-old from Newport, south Wales, revealed that he used a wig and fake teeth to achieve a look closer to that of Andrew’s. 

It’s a duo of props that Michael felt helped him psychologically in getting into character. 

He told the BBC:  ‘It helps with a character if you look very different when you play that character because of the act of taking that stuff off and de-rigging, as we call it,’ Sheen said.

Michael Sheen playing the Duke of York in Prime Video’s new drama A Very Royal Scandal

Ruth Wilson as Emily Maitlis in A Very Royal Scandal, which is released on September 19

Sheen went on to explain that playing a character based on a real, public figure, posed more difficulties for him as an actor and tends to be more ‘intense’. 

The 55-year-old said he wanted to resemble the version of the Duke of York that he formulated from his research. 

‘Obviously there are huge restrictions on that, because unless you can meet the person and spend time with them and get behind the public profile, it’s very hard to know what they’re really like and what’s really making them tick.’

The actor explained that it was the interview scenes that added the most pressure, revealing that he watched it back multiple times a day for months, picking up new details each time.

Sheen added: ‘Having spent so much time focused on that in terms of the research, when you come to actually do it, there’s a lot of pressure.’

Elsewhere, Michael Sheen said that he has a private view about whether the Royal did or did not sleep with teenager Virginia Roberts.

Sheen said that he would do different takes of key scenes playing the Prince as having engaged with Roberts or not, but tried to allow the audience to find it ‘ambiguous.’

The show hints that Prince Andrew might have slept with Roberts – now known as Virginia Giuffre – but thought it unimportant and forgotten about it.

The three-part series, which covers Prince Andrew’s car crash 2019 interview, hits screens across the UK on Thursday on Prime Video

Andrew always strenuously denies the claims he sexually assaulted Roberts and in 2022 paid millions to her to settle a civil case out of court, saying he never met her.

In the dramatisation – which has not claimed to be fully factually accurate – the Duke of York is told about the story the Mail on Sunday was preparing to publish which showed, for the first time, the now famous image of him with his arm around Ms Roberts’ waist at Ghislaine Maxwell’s home.

He is told that the newspaper will be repeating her claims that they slept together and says to an aide: ‘How on earth is a bloke supposed to remember all the women he’s bedded?’

He is also depicted asking the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein for £125,000 to pay of former wife Fergie’s debts, and dancing with him in a nightclub alongside a young blonde woman.

In a flashback scene he’s shown going upstairs at a house and into a bedroom from which female giggling is heard.

Sheen said last night that the programme preserves ambiguity around the question of whether anything physical happened between the prince and Miss Roberts, who was 17 in 2001 and said that she was trafficked for sex with the Prince by Epstein.

Prince Andrew settled out of court with her in 2022.

Sheen said: ‘The challenge with the piece is that there is a mystery at the heart of it. We don’t definitively know what happened.

‘I thought the way (writer) Jeremy (Brock) had depicted it was that by the time you get to the end you have a satisfying experience as an audience member, and yet you don’t know. There is ambiguity.

‘For the actor I can’t play ambiguity, I have to play specificity. I had to make decisions and choices which I never told anyone. I had to know.

Michael Sheen playing the Duke of York in Prime Video’s new drama A Very Royal Scandal

‘I don’t know whether what I decided to play was true or not, so I would not want to say anything or influence how people relate to it.

‘We would do certain key moments in certain scenes where I would do one take that leans into this a little bit and then do another take that leans into that a little bit …and find how far you can go before it leans into being a different story.’

The three part drama follows the Netflix film Scoop which premiered earlier this year.

In Scoop, Gillian Anderson played Newsnight journalist Emily Maitlis and Billie Piper played fixer Sam McAlister, who has taken credit for landing the interview.

A Very Royal Scandal is produced by Maitlis and downgrades McAlister’s role considerably. She is seen as one on a team who work together to get the interview, although the initial contact with Amanda Thirsk is hers.

The drama portrays the Prince as a boorish entitled oaf, prone to routinely shouting ‘F*** off!’ at underlings. 

At one point he challenges Thirsk to run across a garden and when he beats her he calls her a ‘fatty.’

Sheen said: ‘It might surprise you to know that to prepare I lived with Andrew at Buckingham Palace for six months… No. Funny enough I didn’t get much cooperation.

‘You have the script so Jeremy has done all the hard work. Then it was a case of watching everything I can and reading everything I can, trying to find the point of connection.

‘Whenever I play a character based on a real life person I’m looking for the point of connection that hooks me in. 

‘Here it was the footage of a when he came back from the Falklands and he is on the dockside with the rose in his mouth, the brave conquering hero returning. 

‘He was really fit, really hot and everyone thinks you are great and it was all downhill from there, wasn’t it? That journey was my hook in.’

Maitlis said that she felt that the repercussions of the interview were still being felt. 

She said: ‘I think we can see the impact it’s had on Andrews life that was very sudden losing your titles, losing your royal duties, losing your uniform, losing the respect of the British public. 

‘The question we are asking now is has it re set the shape of the monarchy in any form.’