‘Never thought he’d say it on camera’: The moment producers knew Andrew’s interview was explosive TV

Sam McAlister spent a year of her life negotiating Prince Andrew’s now-infamous 2019 TV interview – but even she was shocked by how it unravelled.

As the producer sat inside Buckingham Palace, watching the royal be grilled by BBC Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis about his personal association with Jeffrey Epstein, she couldn’t believe what came out of Andrew’s mouth.

“I’d heard [what he said] a couple of days earlier in the negotiation, but I never thought he would say it on camera,” she told nine.com.au.

Andrew had shocked even those closest to him by agreeing to the sit-down, and McAlister said the idea of a royal family member giving a BBC interview was “already insane”.

“[And] about allegations against him, which he still denies of course, that he sexually assaulted Virginia Giuffre, and talking about something he had never spoken about before in the public domain on television,” she added.

“As [it] progressed, it became very apparent to me that this interview was going to have huge ramifications.”

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Seven years on, those ramifications are still unfolding for the man now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor – something McAlister wasn’t prepared to see.

“I knew it was big, but I had no clue how big,” she added, having just come off stage at SXSW London’s Power, Rewritten panel.

Andrew, 66, was stripped of all his royal titles by his brother King Charles in October 2026, just shy of the sixth anniversary of the trainwreck TV interview in which he denied meeting and taking a photo with Giuffre because he’d been at chain restaurant Pizza Express that night.

But that wasn’t the royal’s first hit. That came four days after the episode aired – and reportedly after a chat with his late mother, and monarch at the time, Queen Elizabeth II.

Andrew announced he was stepping back from public life, effective immediately.

The news, and the sheer speed of the often slow-to-react royal family’s decision, shocked McAlister.

“I was sitting at home on my sofa under a heated blanket, probably having a cheeky bag of crisps, minding my own business, and I remember the tagline came up ... that he’d stepped back from public duties,” she said.

“If I hadn’t been lying down already, I would have fallen over. I mean, what? What a legacy that a single interview profoundly affects the fabric of society.

“We have seen a lot of things that have happened since that day. But for me, until the arrest recently, which, again, fell off my chair, I thought it was a hoax when someone sent it to me ... I think that really was such a profound moment.

“The idea that there was direct accountability for a public service interview that I had been negotiating for a year of my life, that no-one knew about, felt like quite a profound moment.”

McAlister says she never set out to bring down a prince, but is blown away that Andrew has been the only one to face the music over his associations with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“In this network of the Epstein accusations, there’s no greater moment in this story than that interview, in terms of the court of public opinion, in terms of any concept of accountability or visibility, or asking the questions,” McAlister says.

“Those questions had not been asked of anyone, let alone a member of the royal family. You can probably barely get a question like that past any of the other people named in [the Epstein files] because they’re surrounded by entourage and lawyers.

“This was an exposing interview of extraordinary kind, and so in a sense the legacy is what falls after, and my work is just a small part of that story.”

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McAlister, a former criminal barrister, says she’d like to see more people put into the hot seat over their alleged parts in the ongoing saga, which dates back to 2005 when the first sexual abuse allegations were made against Epstein.

“There haven’t been any ramifications for this, really. The only person that’s in jail for this is Ghislaine Maxwell [and] obviously, Epstein’s dead,” she said.

“Many powerful people [are] accused of all kinds of things to do with this, and in a sense, Andrew is the outlier. He’s someone who has had a modicum of accountability for the circles that he kept.

“But I think for people who campaign on these issues, the idea that a member of the royal family might be arrested in relation to the accusations of the sexual nature would be a profound moment in jurisprudence, and obviously in legal proceedings.”

Andrew settled a civil lawsuit brought about by accuser Giuffre in February 2022, agreeing to an undisclosed sum and a charity donation without admitting liability.

The man who was once second-in-line to the throne has always denied any wrongdoing.

Andrew was arrested in Sandringham in February, on his birthday, on suspicion of misconduct in public office. No charges have been laid and the criminal investigation remains ongoing.

However, police have confirmed since then, they’re also looking into potential sexual offences as part of the wider investigation.