Michael Sheen still thinks there’s “a mystery at the heart of the drama” after playing Prince Andrew in Prime Video’s A Very Royal Scandal, which dramatizes the disgraced royal’s 2019 BBC Newsnight interview about his connections to Jeffrey Epstein.
“We don’t know what he did or didn’t do beyond a certain point,” Sheen, 55, told Us Weekly exclusively ahead of the three-part series set to premiere on Thursday, September 19. “We know up to a certain point, he was at this place at this time. … And even some of that is disputed. But beyond that, it’s unknowable.”
Sheen plays Andrew in the miniseries alongside Ruth Wilson, who is taking on the role of British journalist Emily Maitlis. Viewers will see the leadup to and subsequent fallout after Andrew spoke with Maitlis in an infamous BBC Newsnight interview in November 2019.
During the interview Andrew denied knowing Virginia Giuffre — a woman who accused him of sexual assault — through his connection with convicted sex offender Epstein. Giuffre eventually sued Andrew for the alleged assault and they settled out of court.
“There’s been no court case. There’s been no definitive judgment on that, it was settled out of court,” Sheen explained to Us. “That was the challenge for me. How do you play a character where the single most important fact, you don’t know.”
Michael Sheen as Prince Andrew. Christopher Raphael/Blueprint/Sony Pictures Television
The actor said he “had to make choices” about where to take the fictionalized version of Andrew for the miniseries.
“I have to be specific about what I’m doing and how I’m playing this person. But that was a big challenge,” Sheen continued. “Playing a member of the royal family, generally speaking, it is a bit like a hall of mirrors. There’s so much that’s unknowable about them and so much that’s based on gossip and hearsay and that kind of thing. That was a challenge. There was a lot of guesswork involved.”
The members of the royal family may dedicate their lives to public service, but that doesn’t mean they don’t earn money. The monarch’s main source of income comes from a taxpayer-funded settlement known as the Sovereign Grant, which is paid annually. The Sovereign Grant was worth 86.3 million English pounds, or the equivalent of nearly […]
Both Sheen and Wilson told Us they watched Andrew’s BBC interview “hundreds upon hundreds of times” after taking on their respective roles.
“I’ve played real-life characters before — not necessarily where an interview is involved — but I will record interviews with them. That’s good research,” Sheen told Us. “I’ll record the audio of something so that I’m not distracted by the video element of it. There is both watching the interview and then listening to it.”
All three episodes of A Very Royal Scandal premiere on Thursday, September 19.
