Thursday, November 14, 2019, and I’m in the South Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace, with the back of Prince Andrew’s head to the left of my line of sight, and the presenter and interviewer Emily Maitlis — pen in hand, wearing a green khaki military jacket, black trousers and open-toe heeled boots — directly opposite me.
As the interview unfolds, each answer is more excruciating than the last. There are long periods where I just stare at the ornate carpet of that splendid room, desperate to collect myself and not react to what I am hearing. Every answer propels the interview into a new sphere of absurdity. Every answer convinces me this is the scoop of the year. By the end, I’m pretty sure it’s the scoop of the century.
It wasn’t long, however, before the slew of national and global headlines that pilloried him burst his bubble. Not one piece of coverage was positive. On November 20, 2019, just four days after the Newsnight interview had aired, the announcement came: Andrew was to ‘step back from public duties for the foreseeable future’. The Queen’s favourite son had effectively been sacked by his own mother.
So our Newsnight interview certainly had very expensive consequences: it probably hastened that settlement with Giuffre. That didn’t change. I worked behind the scenes and didn’t expect to be given a share of the limelight. Admittedly I had never really played the BBC game — I didn’t know the right people, I didn’t toe the line.
Gillian Anderson plays interviewer Emily Maitlis who has, Sam says, the same clothes, same words, same steely determination, same gaze I secured a little advance, tapped away on my laptop on the sofa late at night, and called my book Scoops. I hoped a few people would buy it. It was the best decision I have ever made.
In October 2018, a PR company working with Andrew sent me the offer of an interview with him about his charitable pursuits. A ‘puff piece’, where you basically spend time with the subject but don’t get to ask any real questions. We didn’t do those on Newsnight, so I declined, but kept the conversation going.
Then things got frenzied. Epstein was finally re-arrested in July 2019. He was charged and awaiting trial for sex trafficking of minors when suddenly in August came news of his death, apparently by his own hand.
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