As she ready to play Emily Maitlis for Prime Video’s A Very Royal Scandal, Ruth Wilson metaphorically stepped into Maitlis’ sneakers — however actually stepped into different clothes objects the veteran journalist truly wore.
Maitlis wore a military-style jacket for her notorious 2019 BBC Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew, which is the subject material lined within the new three-part sequence, out Sept. 19. Although throughout filming Wilson wore a duplicate jacket, Maitlis — who was an govt producer on the present — gave her the precise jacket she wore that day to assist her get into character beforehand.
“She gave me her garments to put on,” Wilson tells PEOPLE. “She gave me the jacket.” Laughing, she says the gesture to assist Wilson embody her was so intimate that “I might scent her on me.”
The jacket wasn’t all that Wilson took from Maitlis’ precise wardrobe. The primary query Wilson requested Maitlis when she was getting ready for the position was, “What’s in your purse?” — and “the bag that I carry round with me all over the place is her private bag,” Wilson says. She provides that the liner of the bag “is simply lined in pen ink” and that “it was actually revealing as a result of it’s filled with headache tablets and paracetamol, an eye fixed masks. She’s like, ‘You’ve all the time received my passports.’ It’s, you already know, you’ve all the time received to be on, prepared to depart.”
Of Wilson’s leadoff query about what’s in her purse, Maitlis tells PEOPLE, “I assumed, ‘Oh my goodness. Am I going to lie about this and make myself sound actually refined and actually organized and actually cool?’ After which I stated, ‘You received’t need to see the within of my purse.’ And he or she stated, ‘I’ll, as a result of it’s going to educate me extra about you than something which you can inform me.’”
Of its contents, Maitlis says “my purse is the purse of a girl who prepares for disaster at each step of the way in which. It has all the things you would probably think about, together with issues that ought to now not be there as a result of they’re well past no matter sell-by date they’d. And as soon as Ruth noticed the contents, she was like, ‘I get it. You put together for issues.’” Maitlis provides, after trying via her purse, Wilson “did truly begin to perceive my head a bit — my thoughts.”
Maitlis wasn’t on set a lot as a result of “I used to be fairly intimidated by the thought of her watching me,” Wilson says. “I used to be like, ‘Please don’t be round.’ I simply thought, ‘I’ll be too self-conscious.’ However we did work so much collectively previous to it.”
Wilson went to interview Maitlis in preparation for the position, which she calls “terrifying, sitting there interviewing an important interviewer.” Wilson additionally watched Maitlis at work, “doing her every day routine so I might observe her in some ways, and there was a number of issues I picked up from that, truly,” she says.
Zoom calls adopted, and Maitlis “was so beneficiant along with her time,” Wilson says. “And actually, it should be fairly a terrifying factor to do to supply your self as much as be noticed in that manner. I actually have such admiration and gratitude for her as a result of it helped get a three-dimensional take a look at her. Issues just like the rollers within the hair — that got here completely from me, going to observe her at work, and he or she had rollers in her hair.”
Wilson provides she discovered about “the chaos of being a journalist” from Maitlis, who was “very beneficiant, and we’re nonetheless in contact now.”
When it got here to watching Wilson painting her, “Once I was watching stuff again, I didn’t know whether or not to cringe or cry or shriek with laughter, as a result of she simply nailed it,” Maitlis says.
A Very Royal Scandal follows the lead-up, aftermath and the pivotal interview between Maitlis and Prince Andrew from practically 5 years in the past, the place Maitlis requested the Duke of York concerning the scandalous accusations he confronted concerning his involvement with convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein and Virginia Guiffre, who accused Andrew of getting intercourse along with her when she was 17 years outdated. Quickly after the Newsnight interview aired, Prince Andrew introduced he was stepping back from public duties, and in January 2022, his mom Queen Elizabeth stripped him of his navy titles and patronages amid Guiffre’s civil sexual assault lawsuit that has since been settled. Prince Andrew has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
Although Prince Andrew, performed by Michael Sheen, is a central determine in A Very Royal Scandal, the sequence is essentially targeted on the ladies surrounding him. Emily Maitlis, who performed the notorious interview, options prominently, as do the three ladies closest to Andrew: his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, and his daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, all of whom are given important display time. The sequence additionally sheds mild on the ladies impacted by the alleged actions of each Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted intercourse offender.
“[Maitlis] had the accountability of these ladies on her shoulders, and each individual watching, to ask the questions and get him to inform his story, and he or she did it,” Wilson says. “And I believe that’s a really constructive affirmation of what very profitable, sensible, good ladies can do and maintain energy to account, and be the voice for ladies who can’t try this, or individuals who aren’t ready to do this. She has that privilege of getting that interview, after which the accountability that comes with that privilege — she makes good on that.”
But it surely wasn’t all straightforward for Maitlis, whose character in A Very Royal Scandal encounters backlash after the interview airs. Deemed “too good” at her job, highly effective figures (males specifically) refuse to be interviewed by her for worry of being taken down as Prince Andrew was after their on-air dialog.
“She’s a feminine journalist in a really male world that type of has to continuously show herself in that world, whereas males don’t usually should,” Wilson says. “She thinks this interview will silence her critics, and actually, as a result of it was so profitable and since it was with somebody so highly effective, folks stopped eager to be interviewed by her, and that actually occurred. Individuals stopped wanting to come back on. She was an excessive amount of of a menace.”
Wilson provides, “So, sadly, there’s a unfavourable aspect to that. What’s wonderful about her, and watching that interview hundreds of occasions, you notice that she, nevertheless highly effective that individual sitting reverse her is — and Prince Andrew is extremely highly effective — she goes to ask these questions, and he or she’s going to carry him to account, and he or she’s going to get his story. And he or she didn’t again down from asking troublesome questions in that state of affairs.”
After the Newsnight interview, the longtime journalist went from reporting on the story to turning into the story, which “wasn’t a cushty place for her to be,” Wilson says. “She doesn’t like being the story, essentially. I imply, a part of her does, as a result of she’s a performer. So truly that’s type of a complexity in her, which I actually appreciated. She turns into the brand new story quite than drawing consideration to the victims. In order that’s additionally what the present offers with — [it] questions that.”
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A Very Royal Scandal is not the one dramatization exploring this pivotal second in tv historical past. Earlier this 12 months, Netflix launched Scoop, a movie that includes Rufus Sewell as Prince Andrew and Gillian Anderson as Emily Maitlis. Nonetheless, A Very Royal Scandal advantages uniquely from Maitlis’s position as an govt producer, which gives the present with “info from the supply,” in accordance with Wilson.
“This present permits us behind the scenes,” she provides, [But] with no felony court docket case, we’ve received no thought what actually occurred. It maintains that thriller and retains that central query alive about energy and exploitation and privilege and the accountability of these in energy and holding energy to account. So I believe the present does all of that basically efficiently.”