Emily Maitlis shares opinion on allegations against Duke of York

Emily Maitlis has said she does not think anyone will ever know the “full truth” about what happened with the Duke of York and Virginia Giuffre but that he is ‘clearly guilty of other things’.

The journalist grilled Andrew over his relationship with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein and the allegations that Epstein’s victim Giuffre was trafficked to have sex with the royal when she was 17 during a 2019 Newsnight exclusive.

Ahead of a new Prime Video series which will dramatise her bombshell interview, Maitlis has revealed she spoke with actress Ruth Wilson, who is set to play her in A Very Royal Scandal, about her views on the duke.

In a first-person piece for The Times’ Saturday magazine, Maitlis wrote: “She (Wilson) asks me simply, bluntly, if I think Prince Andrew is guilty. The speed of the question stops me.

“Ever since the interview, nearly five long years ago, it is one I have never articulated.

“I have had plenty of occasions – and more opportunity than most – to consider Andrew’s ‘guilt’, but the question has always struck me as imprecise.

“So I throw it back at Wilson. Guilty of what? And we begin to debate in earnest. I tell her there is no way I or anyone else will ever know the full truth of what happened with or to Virginia Giuffre, the trafficked Jeffrey Epstein victim who claims she was also abused by the royal.

“But he was clearly guilty of other things – his continued friendship with Epstein after his arrest, his flat-footed response to the victims of sex trafficking.”

Stepped down

Following the BBC broadcast in November 2019 and the furore over Andrew’s friendship with Epstein, the duke stepped down from public life.

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

Reflecting on the duke’s testimony, Maitlis added: “I remind her that in our interview he described himself as ‘too honourable’ to end his relationship with Epstein without going to stay in his Manhattan townhouse for four days.

“He called Epstein’s behaviour “unbecoming”, as if he were a smoker rather than a sex offender. This is not proof of Andrew’s own criminal behaviour, I explain, but it does tell us a story of power and unchecked privilege.

“It tells the story of a man who finds it preposterous these allegations have followed him around for nearly a decade. And perhaps it tells a story of what happens when our royals have no right of reply.”

Michael Sheen

The upcoming three-part news series, which Maitlis is an executive producer on, will see Good Omens actor Michael Sheen star as the duke.

Maitlis later left BBC Newsnight to host The News Agents podcast with fellow former BBC journalists Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall.

Reflecting on her departure, she wrote: “It was the cutting of a long, muscular umbilical cord that had the potential both to nourish and choke.

“I felt slightly rootless, but also weightless. I had my own choices to make now. There was no line manager to sign off my extracurricular projects – or to veto them.

“And I sometimes struggled to work out what was yes and what was no.”

She said she agreed to the dramatisation after meeting literary agent Eugenie Furniss who proposed the production company Blueprint Pictures, which reassured her the series was “not going to caricature a guilty villain”.

“We were going to explore the essence of Andrew, the things he had taken for granted his whole life and how they had shaped him and maybe, ultimately, destroyed him”, she added.

“I explained that despite everything, Andrew had impressed me with his willingness to come to Newsnight to tell his story. In an age of populism and duplicity, he had maintained a kind of old-fashioned valour that brought him to the wicket, as he might have said. No pads.”

Netflix released a film titled Scoop, based on the memoir of Newsnight producer Sam McAlister, earlier this year about the same interview which starred Gillian Anderson as Maitlis.

A Very Royal Scandal will premiere on September 19 on Prime Video in the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.