When I’m about to play Prince Andrew on Prime Video A very royal scandalactor Michael Sheen found one particular mannerism in royal behavior that stood out during his research.
A very royal scandalwhich explores the events leading up to and after the infamous 2019 BBC Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis that effectively ended Prince Andrew’s royal career, is not the first time Michael Sheen has portrayed a real-life person. Known for the role of journalist David Frost in 2008 Frost/NixonSheen also played former British Prime Minister Tony Blair twice — in 2010 A special relationship and in 2006 Queenwhich focused on Andrew’s mother, Queen Elizabeth. However, when it came to portraying Prince Andrew for Amazon’s three-part series, it was the Duke’s laugh that particularly stood out to Sheen.
“In research, when I’m watching all the footage and interviews, I’m waiting for something to jump out and grab me,” Sheen tells PEOPLE ahead of the show’s September 19 release. “In every character I’ve played, something just grabs you at the end and you go, ‘Oh.’ And sometimes it takes a while before you realize that you’ve already found that moment and come back to it. But there is always something.”
Tensions rise in the new trailer for the drama Prince Andrew A very royal scandal (Exclusive)
Michael Sheen as Prince Andrew in ‘A Very Royal Scandal’.
Amazon
That moment of revelation for Sheen happened while watching an interview Prince Andrew gave “maybe 15 years ago,” he recalls. In the interview, Andrew was asked if he had any advice for Prince William, possibly regarding military service. Andrew, who served in a different branch of the armed forces than William, jokes about the rivalry between the services. “He says, ‘I should have said you should be in the Navy,’ and then he laughs, and the laugh he makes is so amazing. It was kind of unusual. I’d never seen that before — it was an exposed moment in a way. .And that really stuck with me.”
It was disturbing, Sheen explains, because: “For the royal family, who are usually so controlled, trying to keep things under the surface, it was a moment of startling, shocking emotion — even if it was just a laugh. But there was something about it that I thought was quite telling, so it stuck with me.”
Physical characteristics also stood out. “He has quite prominent teeth,” Sheen says of Prince Andrew. “He’s pretty toothy. So the combination of enjoying this kind of joke that he made and then those teeth – it was quite shocking.”
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Prince Andrew, Duke of York in the chapel of St. George’s, Windsor Castle, to attend the Easter Morning Service on 31 March 2024.
JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty
Sheen has played royalty now, but would he want to be royalty? “Absolutely not,” he tells PEOPLE. “No. The fairy-tale picture of it seems so quaint—living in palaces and having everything you want, servants and all that. But in reality it seems there are far more restrictions than freedoms. No amount of wealth, possessions, or privileges can make up for what we can’t have the basic kinds of freedoms that many of us take for granted. So no, I wouldn’t want to have that kind of life.”
Playing Prince Andrew, Sheen got to know not only what it must be like to be a royal, but also the institution of the monarchy itself, he says.
“I’ve always quite naively imagined that the media and the royal family are completely separate institutions,” he tells PEOPLE. “But then it became clear that there’s all these kinds of negotiations that go on between them, and there’s kind of, you know, ‘Well, if you do this, then we’ll do that. And if you give us this interview, we will hide this matter.’ You know, it’s real — there’s deals being made between the two institutions all the time, which I found fascinating and didn’t realize. That was a big surprise.”
Sheen explains that when it comes to portraying characters, especially someone like Prince Andrew, he tries to get to what’s going on beneath the surface.
“What makes this person tick?” Sheen says he prepared to play someone who is still in the headlines, even after Andrew’s role as a busy royal ended. “What are the things they want? And what do they think is stopping them from getting what they want?”
He adds, “If you don’t have that, if it’s just surface things and tics and physical things. The audience may enjoy it for a few minutes, but it cannot be tolerated for a three-hour series. There must be something more significant.”
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Prince Andrew, Duke of York on board HMS Invincible during the Falklands War, in which he served as a helicopter pilot. Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Michael Sheen transforms into Prince Andrew for upcoming Amazon Prime series ‘A Very Royal Scandal’
The most obvious footage Sheen should have studied while preparing to play the royal was a stirring interview that aired nearly five years ago, where veteran journalist Emily Maitlis (played by Ruth Wilson in A very royal scandal) asked Prince Andrew about the scandalous allegations he faced regarding his involvement with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Virginia Guiffre, who accused Andrew of having sex with her when she was 17. But News the footage wasn’t the only clip Sheen combed through – and he says he was particularly moved by the footage of Prince Andrew returning from the Falklands War “and seeing the adoration he had,” says Sheen. “He returned from the Falklands War with genuine bravery. I mean, he was in the middle of everything. One would think that the royal family would stay out of harm’s way, but he was right in the middle of it.”
Sheen says he “comes back and there’s this footage of him on the dock getting off the boat. And there’s thousands and thousands of people just cheering and yelling, and he’s looking so attractive and sexy and, you know, handsome. And he’s there in his uniform and he’s the most desirable bachelor, and he’s a prince. It’s like the absolute height of everything. And to think about how, from that moment on, his life can be perceived as a kind of downward trajectory in which he gets older, gets fatter, loses his appearance a little. He is moving further and further away from the center of power of what is known as the ‘reserve’. The brother who will never be king. As [King] Charles has children and goes further and further away, and all those things that must have given him a sense of his worth and pride, all those things disappear. So that was that recording of his return [that] had a great influence on me.”
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Ruth Wilson as Emily Maitlis and Michael Sheen as Prince Andrew in ‘A Very Royal Scandal’.
Amazon
Reflecting on what he learned about the Duke of York, Sheen says: “I was very surprised that someone who, despite being perceived to have such privilege, entitlement and what you would imagine to be great wealth, seemed, at least on the outside , to be someone who feels like he’s being denied so much. Part of the attraction to Epstein wasn’t just that there was some financial help there. It seemed unusual that a prince could be in financial trouble. Someone who you think would be fabulously rich seems to have money issues and also seemed to be attracted to a community where they would treat him like a prince. [He] he didn’t feel like he was somehow being treated like a prince in his own country. I found that remarkable. And it’s quite surprising that someone who seems to have so much can experience his life as having relatively little.”
Prince Andrew, Duke of York, reacts as he arrives at St. George’s, Windsor Castle, to attend the Easter Morning Service on 31 March 2024.
JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty
Soon after News aired interview, Prince Andrew announced his retirement from public duties, and in January 2022, Queen Elizabeth stripped him of his military titles and patronage amid Guiffre’s civil sexual assault lawsuit, which has since been settled. Prince Andrew has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
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Michael Sheen as Prince Andrew in ‘A Very Royal Scandal’.
Amazon
When it comes to Sheen and the royal family, the actor took a decisive step away from that institution in his own life: in 2017, eight years after receiving the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) from Queen Elizabeth for services to drama. In 2009, the Welsh actor quietly returned the award after studying the history of relations between England and Wales for the 2017 Raymond Williams Society Lecture, PEOPLE reported.
“As I finished writing that lecture … I remember sitting there saying, ‘Well, I have a choice – either I’m not going to give this lecture and stick with the OBE, or I’m going to give this lecture and I have to give it my OBE back.’ , said Sheen in a conversation with The Guardian columnist Owen Jones.
Despite feeling “incredibly honoured” to receive the award, Sheen expressed discomfort with practices such as handing the title of Prince of Wales to an English-born heir to the throne – a tradition that began in 1301 when King Edward I bestowed the title of Prince of Wales on his son as would put down the Welsh rebellion. “These things have power,” Sheen said.
In 2017, when Sheen returned the award, King Charles was still the Prince of Wales; In 2022, after the death of Queen Elizabeth, the title went to his eldest son, Prince William, who still holds it today.
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