"Secrets of Prince Andrew" The Documentary That Could Have Been

The two-parter from A&E isn't sure what it wants to be

One of the abandoned storylines in A&E’s two part, four hour documentary Secrets of Prince Andrew is the discussion the duality of Prince Andrew’s personality. The very same could be said for the documentary itself. In trying to tell several stories, they end up forgetting the central story: The Secrets of Prince Andrew.

While part 1 felt like a frustrating rehabilitation of Prince Andrew, part 2 was a fascinating look at the women behind Newsnight’s interview that shocked the world and took down a Prince. A major issue is the documentary doesn’t telegraph to the audience what they should expect. Now, “secrets” in the title should be a clue, but the storytelling doesn’t really craft a story of a Prince with secrets. Part 2 is almost entirely focused on the lead up to Newsnight’s interview between Prince Andrew and Emily Maitlis and the aftermath. That is news to the audience as the ending of part 1 doesn’t indicate that’s where the show is headed. It’s ultimately a documentary that tries to do too much. When it finally had a clear point of view in part 2, did anyone stick around to listen to it?

Part 1 frames life as happening to Prince Andrew and not the choices that he has made, in part, because of the idea that he is untouchable and deserving of every last luxury. A lot of my notes on the first half involve asides like, “What the actual f*ck?” and “No they didn’t.” We needed backstory on Prince Andrew, but we didn’t need a full two hours. It’s a build up that does not pay off in the end, as the threads of part 1 are seemingly forgotten in part 2. There’s an obvious attempt at fair and balanced reporting that ends up overcorrecting in favor of Prince Andrew. The most shocking misstep is that the documentary allows two friends of Andrew’s — former business partner Allan Starkie and friend, Lady Victoria Harvey — to spout off conspiracy theories and victim blame Virginia Giuffre, the woman who accused Prince Andrew of assaulting her as a teenager via Jeffrey Epstein, with little to no pushback. Allan Starkie, with his face full of fillers that haven’t settled yet, makes up for what he cannot convey in facial expressions with words to show the rage he feels over these attacks on a “war hero”, going as far to defend Andrew’s lack of sweating defense. A specific claim that he and Lady Victoria Harvey make is that the photo of Andrew and Virginia, his arm around her tiny teenaged frame, is digitally altered. There is zero pushback until after the commercial break when Emily Maitlis of Newsnight explains that she had experts examine the photo and couldn’t find evidence that it had been altered. But, at that point, is it a little too late? And what’s infuriating is how brilliantly they show juxtaposing positions between different commentators in part 2. They clearly could have done the same in part 1, so why didn’t they? Another example is there is the suggestion made in part 1 that since Jeffrey Epstein was a prolific con man, perhaps Prince Andrew was just another one of his manipulated victims. We do not hear the other side of this until part 2 when one of the producers asks Lisa Phillips, a former model and victim of Epstein’s, to reply to this comment. She appears incredulous at the insinuation and reminds everyone that Andrew is a grown man who made a choice. Why. Wasn’t. That. In. Part. 1 I screamed into the oblivion, frightening my nearly deaf toothless 13-year-old Min Pin (to give you an idea of how loud I protested).

A through line in parts 1 and 2 is the catastrophic sit-down interview Prince Andrew did with Emily Maitlis of Newsnight. Part 1 includes flash forwards to 2018-2019 when Sam McAlister and Emily Maitlis start laying the groundwork for Prince Andrew to sit down for an interview with Newsnight, which Maitlis states, typically ends with someone being fired. Except in this case, it is the royal who is demoted.

If part 1 is a frustrating, unbalanced examination of Prince Andrew’s life and character, part 2 is a gripping, behind-the-scenes look at the disastrous interview that acted as a final nail in the coffin of Prince Andrew’s working royal career. A new bit of information to me was that Prince Andrew surprised McAlister and Maitlis at the pre-interview at Buckingham Palace by bringing Princess Beatrice, his eldest daughter, along with him. What better bonding time between a parent and a child than hearing your father talk about his lack of sweating as a defense against assaulting a woman young enough to be his daughter? Let’s just go to McDonald’s and call it a day next time dad. In hindsight that is an interesting detail since part of Prince Andrew’s claim is that he couldn’t possibly have danced the night away with Virginia at a London nightclub, since he was at the Pizza Express with Beatrice from about 4-5pm. A very normal detail you would have burned into your memory despite no proof of the actual event taking place. Was Beatrice ready to cover for him and is that one of the reasons she was in attendance at the pre-interview? Was she there to remind the women of Andrew’s humanity? I don’t know, but it was a thought that crossed my mind.

One of the highlights of part 2 is witnessing the reactions of friends, lawyers and journalists as they watched clips from Prince Andrew’s interview that truly gets worse with time. The viewer gets to see the clip and then compare how others in the documentary react to it. The effect is brilliant. It’s a shame they didn’t do that in part 1. I could have watched an entire documentary of just that. Like Bravo’s People’s Couch if they had only covered the most horrifying episodes of reality tv, like Season 2 of RHOBH.

There is a story here that isn’t about Prince Andrew’s secrets; it’s about the power of good journalism. It’s about the tenacity of two women who spent over a year keeping the door open for an interview they figured they would never land. It’s about the entitlement of a man who was so used to getting his way that he incorrectly calculated that simply sharing his side of the story in a sit-down interview would silence the whole affair. This could have been called “From Royal to Ruin: The Interview that Ended Prince Andrew’s Career” or “The Two Women Who Nabbed an Interview and Took Down a Prince” or “The Nine Days That Changed Prince Andrew’s Life Forever.” There were so many ways to make this an attention-grabbing title that would have delivered on its promise. Instead you end up with two separate documentaries that seemingly forget the other one exists.

My recommendation is to watch part 2 if just for the incredible story of this interview and the immediate aftermath. There’s a good documentary in there, it’s just two hours and two minutes too late.

-Meredith