A Very Royal Scandal: Interview with the empire
the true crime that's worth your time
The crime
"Participation" by Prince Andrew, Duke of York in sexual activities with a minor. Allegedly.
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The story
Right up top, I'll just renew my objection to the classification of Jeffrey Epstein's monstrous crimes as "a scandal" – although I get the sense the makers of A Very Royal Scandal would probably agree with that, and only the fact that AVRS is technically the third season in a franchise with "Scandal" already in the title prevented them from calling the docudrama something else. The Duke Of Yuck, for instance, or Shut Up About The Falklands Already, Jesus.
AVRS's title card. The word "scandal" isn't their fault/choice, but still: uch. (Amazon)
Of course, one great way around the naming-convention problem here is to…just not make the thing. AVRS, premiering on Amazon Prime at 12:01 AM ET tonight/tomorrow, is about Prince Andrew's disastrous 2019 interview on BBC2's Newsnight, in which he attempted to defend himself against the allegations and blundered himself right out of a job; Scoop already waded into that fray earlier this year. But, to paraphrase H.L. Mencken rather liberally, nobody ever went broke underestimating the interest of the viewing public in the tone-deaf tweedy cringe of the British royal family, as portrayed by the best actors that streaming money can buy.
It's not a bad bet, and it pays off here in a compulsively watchable three hours. Superfluous? Probably, but if you start watching AVRS, you'll probably keep going to the end, with few regrets.
This third installment of the Very…Scandal series is written by Jeremy Brock (Mrs. Brown) and directed by Julian Jerrold (The Great Train Robbery and several episodes of The Crown), two vets of British prestige true crime and royals content who understand the assignment – that we want to see the contrast between the fancy and imposing institution and the C-plus people who often populate it.
An extremely awkward luncheon. From L, Sofia Oxenham, Claire Rushbrook, Honor Swinton Byrne, Michael Sheen. (Amazon)
And it's cast extremely well for that purpose, all the way to the edges. Jeffrey Epstein himself is in only a single scene, but John Hopkins nails the way Epstein walked and occupied space. Joanna Scanlan as Andrew's maybe smitten, definitely overmatched attaché Amanda Thirsk is perfectly pitiable and frustrating, especially in scenes with her gelid opposite number on the Queen's staff, Sir Edward Young (Alex Jennings, who's probably played a dozen historical kings and princes; Crown-watchers will remember him as the middle-aged iteration of the Duke of Windsor).
Claire Rushbrook as Sarah Ferguson, and Honor Swinton Byrne and Sofia Oxenham as Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, Andrew's daughters, do a particularly nice job suggesting the IRL figures they play without doing impressions, and populating (I assume) imagined scenes with sympathetic emotions and reactions. AVRS avoids depicting a couple of key figures at all – the Queen and the other princes and princesses apply their pressures from offscreen – which is smart, and made me wish the script had devoted the time it didn't spend on "senior royals" to more with Bea and Eugenie.
In several scenes, the writing lingers clumsily on the idea that presenter Emily Maitlis (Ruth Wilson, tops as always) has regrets about blowing up Andrew's life and reputation, and about his inner circle getting caught in the blast radius. It's not that this isn't how Maitlis felt – the AVRS version of the story uses her memoir as a framework, and she's an exec producer on the project, so I assume it's accurate – and it's not that Wilson can't carry those sequences. But if the story doesn't quite allow you to center Virginia Giuffre or other victims effectively, and if you imply that Sarah Ferguson and the princesses were to a different/lesser degree downstream victims of Andrew's alleged misdeeds? You don't need a shot of Maitlis biting her lip after a GMA host asks how it feels to "bring down" a royal. Let these seldom-heard-from royals make their own points.
Rushbrook and Sheen realize Andrew's made a huge mistake. (Amazon)
You could also do with maybe half the shots of Michael Sheen's Andrew stalking impotently around the grounds of various estates, feeling sorry for himself – but Sheen is also very good. Andrew is the epitome of the mediocre white male; Sheen plays him as one who's also aware that he isn't anyone's hero or first choice, as a representative of "the firm" or as a person. It's a narrow tightrope for AVRS to stay up on to let the audience understand Andrew and how he got here, but not to make excuses or create too much compassion for him, and the script and Sheen pull it off. Andrew's resentments, arrogance, and knee-jerk citation of decades-old military service are legible, and credibly exhausting.
If you watched Scoop – or footage of the actual Newsnight interview, honestly – you probably don't "need" three more hours on the topic, but A Very Royal Scandal is well made and occasionally thought-provoking. With all the other high-profile true crime premiering this week, it may get lost, so throw it on your watchlist for a rainy weekend.