Queen didn’t approve Prince Andrew’s insensitive interview – Prince Charles urged to consider downgrading brother
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The Queen did not give her approval for the Duke of York’s Newsnight interview about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, The Telegraph reports. However, CNN reports that it seems the Queen approved it.
In a first-person piece in published in The Times of London on Monday, BBC journalist Emily Maitlis detailed the negotiation and planning leading up to the Newsnight interview, which had been pitched to Andrew’s team a year before it aired.
Initially, Maitlis wrote, the Duke’s team did not want to discuss Epstein in any potential interview. But as controversy about Epstein — who died by suicide in August while awaiting trial on federal charges that he sexually abused underage girls and ran a sex trafficking ring — intensified, Andrew’s team changed their minds, she said.
Palace insiders accused the Duke’s private office of “operating in a silo” as it emerged Her Majesty was only made aware of the primetime interrogation by Emily Maitlis after it had been set up.
Rather than ending speculation about the Duke’s behaviour, the hour-long programme revived the controversy and generated fresh questions about his movements and various “alibis” he gave.
Meanwhile, the Telegraph also reports that the Prince of Wales has been urged to consider downgrading the Duke of York’s role as a working royal when he becomes king, in the wake of his disastrous television appearance.
The Prince is not believed to have been informed about his younger brother’s Newsnight interview until shortly before broadcast. The fallout is likely to overshadow the beginning of his week-long tour of New Zealand with the Duchess of Cornwall, that begins in Auckland today.
The Prince is said to have regarded his brother’s decision to grant the interview with “incredulity and alarm” and had considered it “misguided”.
A senior royal source, noting the public backlash, told The Daily Telegraph: “It’s possible the Prince of Wales could decide to remove the Duke of York’s status as a working royal when he becomes king.
“It’s no secret that Charles wants to streamline the monarchy when he eventually succeeds the Queen, and they have had plenty of disagreements in the past over Andrew’s role and that of his daughters.
