Royals: Queen stood by Prince Andrew until the end

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The Newsnight interview, broadcast in November 2019, was widely perceived to be a notable coup for the programme and an ill-advised move by Prince Andrew. Sam McCalister, the producer who orchestrated the infamous interview, was a guest on an episode of the Royally Obsessed podcast in September. She told hosts Rachel Bowie and Roberta Fiorito about the process of securing the bombshell interview with the Duke of York, which included tense negotiations and a “surprise” guest. 

During the final stages of setting up the Newsnight special, Andrew was joined by his daughter Princess Beatrice for a round of negotiations. “It was a next-level curveball,” Ms McAlister said. “I’m a meticulous researcher and negotiation seems a simple thing, but it really isn’t.”

She continued: “[It’s] a million little calibrations, but not one of those calibrations prepared me for that moment when he came around the corner and he goes: ‘Oh, by the way, I hope you don’t mind — I brought someone with me.’ And I thought: ‘Lawyer, it’s all over.’ Instead, around the corner, Princess Beatrice.” 

The former producer went on to say that she was especially attentive to Beatrice, through fears that she may encourage her father to pull the plug on the interview and knowledge of her close relationship with Queen Elizabeth II. 

“I presumed that she had quite a bit of influence on her father,” Ms McAlister said. “My view of it was kind of twofold because I knew she was a very, very nice young woman, I knew people who knew her and said she was congenial, easy to deal with and I knew something really important about her…she was very close to the Queen.”

She explained that, at the time, she assumed Andrew and Beatrice would go to the Queen to discuss the interview, saying: “You can just imagine — from his kind of boisterous personality and how he’s perceived to be the favourite son — that he kind of goes: ‘Mum, it’s the best idea ever. I must do it.’

“And then the Queen would turn to Princess Beatrice, the sensible one in that situation. I felt that her answer was actually crucial. So that’s why I describe her as the rainmaker, because if she would have said no — game over, in my view. I think the Queen would have respected a more circumspect response to us.” 

According to the producer, the Princess came across as “intelligent”, asked “good, sensible questions” and took notes throughout the conversation.

She said: “I got a very good impression of her — both intellectually and in terms of the love that she clearly had for her father, whatever he was accused of which obviously is a burden for a child in that situation.” 

She described coming to the end of the negotiation, claiming Andrew’s final words were: “‘We’re going to go and speak to mum, come on Beatrice.” 

As we know now, the Queen did give her permission for the interview to go ahead and even allowed it to be filmed in Buckingham Palace. 

Emily Maitlis previously explained: “We have finished laying out our pitch. An awkward moment of silence falls. And the Duke tells us he must ‘seek approval from higher up’. It dawns on us then that he means the Queen herself.”

Writing for The Times in 2019, she said: “I am trying to understand the significance of the Queen giving us her own formal quarters in which to film, but it feels like a code I do not properly understand. Is she endorsing her son? The need for this interview? Or am I reading way too much into every step, merely because there are so many of them?”

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The eventual interview saw the Duke make a series of astonishing statements, including an alibi of being at Pizza Express, claiming he could not sweat and failing to express regret for his association with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Ms Maitlis examined the relationship between the Prince and the disgraced financier, as well as his former friend Ghislaine Maxwell, who was sentenced to 20 years for sex trafficking in June. 

While Andrew expressed regret about his continued association with Epstein following his 2008 admission of soliciting underage sex, he said he did not regret the friendship itself as it facilitated connections which were “actually very useful”. 

Furthermore, he failed to offer an apology to the victims of Epstein’s crimes and made several statements protesting his own innocence in regard to claims made by Virginia Roberts Giuffre that she was forced to have sex with him when she was 17, claims he has always vehemently denied. 

He denied that they had had sex in 2001 saying he had been at Pizza Express in Woking that evening, and claimed Ms Giuffre’s claims about dancing with him at a London club while he was sweaty were false as he had temporarily lost the ability to sweat after an “adrenaline overdose” during the Falklands War.

The interview was widely seen as disastrous and the fallout resulted in Andrew stepping down from his royal duties. Just over a year later, he paid a multi-million-pound settlement in a civil sex abuse case brought by Ms Giuffre without admitting wrongdoing.

In July, Ms McAlister released her book, Scoops: Behind The Scenes Of The BBC’s Most Shocking Interviews, which gives further insight into the Newsnight interview. 

Scoops: Behind The Scenes Of The BBC’s Most Shocking Interviews by Sam McAlister was published by Oneworld and is available for purchase here.

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