Prince Andrew asked for his calamitous BBC Newsnight interview to be reshot to include his Pizza Express alibi because he forgot to mention it the first time around, Emily Maitlis has revealed.
Andrew’s claim that he could not have had sex with 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre as alleged because he was at a branch of Pizza Express in Woking for a children’s birthday party was recorded in a follow-up interview with Maitlis that the prince insisted upon.
The duke was convinced the alibi would get him off the hook but his explanation prompted worldwide mockery. The BBC initially rejected the prince’s request for the follow-up interview because “clearly it was going to make him sound kind of ridiculous”, Maitlis told the Desperately Seeking Wisdom podcast, but granted his request in the interest of transparency.
She said: “He wanted to insert that afterwards. I said to him, ‘Is there anything you haven’t had a chance to say?’ He said, ‘Oh actually, I didn’t give you my alibi.’ And he told us about the Pizza Express thing. We let him record that again, but it was complicated because afterwards, journalistically, I thought if we don’t include it, we haven’t included something that was really important for the interviewee to make known,” Maitlis told podcast host Craig Oliver, a former Downing Street director of communications.
“In light of the whole, you know, Diana interview fiasco, we thought we have got to be transparent,” Maitlis said, referring to the BBC’s 1995 interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, which was secured by deception and subterfuge. The two interview recordings were cut together for broadcast in November 2019.
The follow-up was also recorded in Buckingham Palace, giving the interview an appearance of seamless continuity. The interview, in which Andrew spoke publicly about his friendship with the convicted American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein for the first time, was poorly received and led to him being abruptly suspended from royal duties.
The prince has not carried out any royal duties since November 2019, the month the interview was broadcast.
The story of the interview has been adapted into a film by Netflix. Scoop, due for release this spring, stars Gillian Anderson as Maitlis and Rufus Sewell as Andrew. The film is based on a book by Newsnight guest booker Sam McAlister, who is played by Billie Piper, inset below.
There is a rival adaptation of the interview currently in production with Amazon Studios. A Very Royal Scandal is set to star Ruth Wilson as Maitlis and Michael Sheen as Andrew. The three-part series will “follow Emily Maitlis’s professional and personal journey as a Newsnight journalist, leading up to her acclaimed interview with Prince Andrew”.
Maitlis left Newsnight in 2022 to set up The News Agents podcast with BBC colleagues Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall.
Prince Andrew continues to vehemently deny the allegations made against him by Giuffre. He reached an out of court settlement with her in New York in 2022.
Ms Giuffre also claimed they attended Tramp nightclub together and recalled Prince Andrew being “sweaty” as they danced. But in the Newsnight interview, he said it could not have been him as he was unable to sweat at the time as a result of trauma caused by serving in the Falklands War.
