Andrew: The Problem Prince
The life of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the third eldest and favored offspring of Queen Elizabeth II, and once second in line to the British throne, is told primarily as it relates to the scandal surrounding his extremely wealthy friend Jeffrey Epstein, already a convicted pedophile (2008) but who was further charged in 2019 leading out of an FBI investigation into sex trafficking including of minor women. Implicated in that sex trafficking, the Prince ultimately consented to an exclusive interview with Emily Maitlis on BBC's Newsnight (1980) which initially aired November 16th 2019, two days after the interview itself took place. While the interview from the Prince's perspective was meant to allow him to clear his name by telling his side directly, it ended up being a trainwreck for him which led to further legal issues and a precipitous fall in the court of public opinion for him.
- 2023-2023
- 1 season
- A&E Television Networks
- Documentary
- TV-14
The life of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the third eldest and favored offspring of Queen Elizabeth II, and once second in line to the British throne, is told primarily as it relates to the scandal surrounding his extremely wealthy friend Jeffrey Epstein, already a convicted pedophile (2008) but who was further charged in 2019 leading out of an FBI investigation into sex trafficking including of minor women. Implicated in that sex trafficking, the Prince ultimately consented to an exclusive interview with Emily Maitlis on BBC's Newsnight (1980) which initially aired November 16th 2019, two days after the interview itself took place. While the interview from the Prince's perspective was meant to allow him to clear his name by telling his side directly, it ended up being a trainwreck for him which led to further legal issues and a precipitous fall in the court of public opinion for him.
Season 1 Episode Guide
2 Episodes 2023
Episode 1
Part One
Mon, Aug 21, 2023 85 mins
In 2018, the people behind the BBC news program Newsnight (1980) entered into negotiations with the representatives of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor for an exclusive interview. The former, as a new program, would not do an interview with topics that were off the table, the one they knowing being that probable issue from the Prince's representatives being his friendship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and Epstein's girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell. The progress of these negotiations is interspersed with a chronology of the Prince's life: he being the favored offspring of Queen Elizabeth II, always being the "runner-up" as being second in line to the throne from his birth to slowly dropping in line over time, he coming into his own in being considered a war hero in his naval service, his playboy reputation moving into his fairy-tale marriage to Sarah Ferguson and their just as quick fall from public grace in their divorce which is known to have contained infidelity on both sides, and he being back on the dating market while needing to reinvent himself which included the dichotomy between his relatively small royal stipend against he continuing that outward lavish life of a royal leading in part to his friendship with extremely wealthy Epstein. A profile of Epstein is also provided leading into and out of that conviction.
Episode 2
Part Two
85 mins
It's 2019, and the problems for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and the negotiations between his representatives and those for Newsnight (1980) hit a fever pitch with the changing situation regarding Jeffrey Epstein, starting with Epstein's arrest and charge for sex trafficking. With the Prince already being known to be a friend and thus being one of the many men probably involved in that sex trafficking ring, the next step in that quickly evolving situation is Epstein committing suicide while in custody. Without the story being able to come to light directly from Epstein who may not have implicated the Prince, the story, in the public consciousness, of the Prince's involvement takes on a life of its own. Feeling the need to clear his name, the Prince ultimately agrees to that exclusive interview on Newsnight, which ultimately took place on November 14th, 2019 and aired two days later. While the Prince arguably believed the interview went well in he being able to tell his side and possibly quash the story for good, it had the exact opposite effect in his statements in the interview further digging his own hole deeper in the scandal. It also led to who would have been one of the people to testify in the Epstein case, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who has long stated that she was trafficked at age seventeen in being forced to have sex with the Prince, suing the Prince, which she had no intention of doing until the interview. To date, the culmination of the Prince's problem occurred with the passing of his generally beloved mother, Queen Elizabeth II, who was his primary protector.