Sam McAlister on Scandals, Scoops, and the Prince Andrew Interview (Part One)
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Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti.

On the show today, Sam McAllister, the BAFTA and Emmy nominated producer and author of Scoops, behind the scenes of the BBC's most shocking interviews. Sam McAllister is the woman who secured the now infamous Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew when he claimed to Emily Maitlis that he was in a Pizza Express in Woking on the night that Virginia Dufresne alleges he slept with her.

This was the broadcast which set public opinion alight and from which many have supposed the royal family will never quite recover. Sam joined us recently on stage at the Kiln Theatre in London to discuss the behind-the-scenes drama of the most notorious interviews in television journalism and the challenges of navigating truth, power, celebrity and accountability in today's media landscape.

She was joined in conversation by award-winning journalist, broadcaster and documentary filmmaker, Jenny Kleeman. This episode is coming to you in two parts. If you want to listen to the live recording in full and ad-free, why not consider becoming an Intelligence Squared Premium subscriber? You can head to intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more, or hit the IQ2 Extra button on Apple. Now let's join our host, Jenny Kleeman, with more. Hello!

Thank you so much for having me. Welcome to this Intelligence Squared event. Sam McAllister on scandals, scoops, and of course, the Prince Andrew interview. I am Jenny Kleeman, and I'm going to give Sam an introduction, although I'm sure you all know who she is. She is a BAFTA and Emmy-nominated journalist.

interviews producer on BBC2's flagship news programme Newsnight. She was there from 2010 to 2021 where she negotiated head-to-head interviews with Silicon Valley CEOs, world leaders and Hollywood superstars. She led year-long negotiations for the groundbreaking interview with Prince Andrew on his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein and of course her book

which is here and also on sale outside. Scoops, behind the scenes of the BBC's most shocking interviews, has been adapted into an Emmy-nominated major motion picture for Netflix starring Gillian Anderson, Billy Piper, Keely Hawes, and Rufus Sewell.

We are going to have a bit of a chat for the next 45 minutes or so, and then you will have a chance to ask some questions. So have a think about what you would like to ask Sam. Of course, we have to start with Prince Andrew. I'm sure everybody always wants to start with Prince Andrew. It's fair enough, Jenny. It's fair enough. So believe it or not, it has been...

more than five years, hasn't it? I know. Was it November? Let's not discuss the exact ages. We were discussing this in the room, weren't we? It was. It was November 2019 that this extraordinary exposition happened. Yes. And I mean, many people think of the Royal Family in terms of before that interview and after that interview. Right.

How do you assess the fallout? I mean, do you think it has been that significant for the royal family? I mean, I think it's been hugely significant for a number of reasons. I mean, the first reason is that we will never, ever get to see anything like this ever again.

It was an extraordinary opportunity to speak to someone about his involvement with a prolific paedophile, to answer allegations about whether or not he had sexually assaulted Virginia Dufresne, which he still denies. And not only that, it was on camera with one of the most tenacious, brilliant journalists of our generation, Emily Maitlis, in Buckingham Palace with no conditions for 48 minutes.

That will never change.

ever happen again and frankly I'm surprised it happened at all. So the fallout I think has been quite profound first of all because obviously of the direct legal consequences with the civil suit which meant that Virginia Roberts was able to land that suit against Prince Andrew, again civil not criminal liability to be clear it's the lawyer in me I can't help it I'm just so like risk averse on that front but also because I think it changed the conversation around accountability. This is one of the most powerful men in the country and by the power of journalism

and hard work, and by the power of his quite difficult answers. For anyone who hasn't seen the interview, I'm afraid, spoiler alert, it didn't go well. And if you watch it back, you'll see it was what we call in the trade a shit show.

So it was really just that really tiny sort of David and Goliath situation. You know, the nobody producer, that was me, by the way, behind the scenes, part-time, single mum, you know, whiffling away at the BBC, trying to do right by the great British public, trying to do journalism, and a mighty prince. And in a sense, I think that's what was profound about it, is that it was a reminder that journalism matters, hard work matters, and sometimes there is nowhere to hide.

Did you know it was a shit show when it was happening? I did. And the reason why is because there's this really amazing part of basically doing these kinds of negotiations is the interview itself usually is the most disappointing part for the person that does this kind of work, right? So usually you whiffle away and you kind of get everything arranged. And then the interview happens. It's four or five minutes. Nothing really happens. You know, it was much better having the chat beforehand where they said all kinds of contentious stuff.

Why this was so extraordinary was that four days before the interview happened, I'm in Buckingham Palace with Emily Maitlis, who I now think of as Gillian Anderson. It's all gone very surreal. They're both wonderful, obviously, in different ways. And we're sitting there as close as I am to you, Jenny. You're now Prince Andrew. I'm sorry about that.

She's going to see me. And Emily Maitlis is my book in the middle. We're really that close. We're that proximate. And we're there to do a face-to-face negotiation in Buckingham Palace with a member of the royal family to try and convince him to come on Newsnight. Now, why it was so extraordinary hearing those words was because I had heard them already.

Three days earlier from the Thursday where we did the record, I'm sitting as proximate as we are, hearing Prince Andrew explain his alibi. And I used to be a criminal defense barrister, so I have what I call a resting kind of like producer face, a resting criminal barrister face. And it goes something along the lines of this. By the way, you know, I do have an alibi. Oh, cool. What's your alibi? I was at Peace Express in Woking. Resting producer face.

No physical reaction, no eyebrow raise, no looking at Emily Maitlis, no laughing, no nothing. No follow-up questions. Oh, interesting. And also, it couldn't have been me because I don't sweat. Oh, really? Yes, it's a well-known medical condition. Resting producer face again.

And so we had heard those extraordinary explanations, which may or may not have been true, but certainly felt extraordinary and were not in the public domain. So the journalist kind of like, beep, radar is going full, full, full throttle. But we did not think he would say it on camera.

So the extraordinary thing for me, sitting 15 feet behind him in the south drawing room in that November, was not so much what he said, but the fact that he said it in public. And every time he repeated something that he had said to us, just these few feet away, on camera, to the world, I mean, you know, I just really didn't know how to... I mean, I looked at the floor most of the time. It was extraordinary that he said it on camera.

How then did you get to that place where you were having that conversation with Prince Andrew, where he was telling you these things even not on camera? First of all, what made you even think it was possible that he might agree and how did you get him to agree? - Well, this story is a bit of a kind of like a, from a zero to a hero kind of story. And sorry to cast myself as the kind of hero, but just, you know, it works well in explaining it.

In the 13 months prior, when they first got in touch with me, it was via a PR. And it's so disappointing when you meet a screenwriter. Sorry, gratuitous name dropping about to come up, for which I apologize. But Peter Muffet, he just worked with Bryan Cranston on Your Honour.

and now he's stuck with Sam McAllister in a cafe in Soho. And he leant forward and he was like, so how did it begin? And I'm like, with an email. But you know, that's modern life, right? So a PR sent me an email. I worked as the bookings producer, the interviews producer at Newsnight. It's my job to get bums on seat.

It is the world's shortest queue. Who wants to come on air and be mauled by Jeremy Paxman as it was or Emily Maitlis in front of the world? A very, very small queue. So I was used to rejection rather than receiving emails. But the email came and said, you know, we're representing Prince Andrew. It was a PR I'd worked with before. I've not put their name in the public domain. And they said, we'd like you to come and talk to him about effectively how amazing he is.

It's what we call a puff piece. So you turn up at Buckingham Palace, they kind of like, you know, have a little taser. You want to talk to him about, you know, the future of the monarchy, his friendship with a prolific paedophile. But instead, it's quite awkward to introduce as a question, but instead he wants to talk about Pitch at the Palace, his entrepreneurial pursuit. So he only wanted to speak about that. So a year and a little more prior to the interview, we turned it down. That's the first time.

A few months later, having stayed in touch and said, you know, if his position changes, if he will start to talk about, you know, kind of like the issues that we talk about as a news organization, if he will do that, then please do get back in touch. And usually they never get back in touch.

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So in the May of the next year, in a surreal kind of like situation, I was meant to be on half term. I bring up my kid on my own. I was meant to be going to a spa. I literally never go to a spa. I'd saved up, you know, and suddenly I get a message on the Friday night. It's like half term. Can you come to Buckingham Palace on Monday?

I didn't even tell my boss because Prince Andrew is not going to agree to come on Newsnight, guys, right? To speak to Emily Maitlis about being friends with Jeffrey Epstein. That is not going to happen. So I treated it a little bit like a day out. I've got to be honest, you know, it was a slight glibness, but I took pictures. If you've seen the movie, those pictures are reenacted by Billy Piper. I took those. I took pictures of my knees just in case they rugby tackled me. I took pictures of the picture of the queen, um,

I took some pouty pictures, I'm so sorry, but it was for my mom. And it was really at that stage that I just thought it was a conversation that would never come to fruition. I spent two and a half hours there with Amanda Thirsk, his chief of staff,

and played by Keeley Hawes in the movie. And at the end of that, I'd managed to negotiate onto the table a conversation in which Prince Andrew would talk about Brexit. Remember that? Harry and Meghan, remember them? And this was really quite a profound deal at this stage.

But then she said there was a red line. And of course, no prizes for guessing, the red line was that friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. It's a long time ago, or words to that effect. And so we turned it down again.

So at this stage, we've turned down an interview with Prince Andrew twice. My newsroom was lukewarm, mid-warm. But then the world sets a light for Jeffrey Epstein and for Ghislaine Maxwell and for Prince Andrew. And suddenly I've gone from, we don't want that to, oh my God, we want that. And the stakes completely changed. But I have the in.

So did I think they would say yes in the months from May to October and November when they finally did? Absolutely not.

But was I going to die in a ditch and do everything I could to try and bring that really important piece of journalism to the great British public, of course, but also to my programme of which I was so proud and so hard working for? Absolutely. So it felt like an impossible dream, but it became clearer and clearer that they might just die.

say yes and the stakes were so high and those six months of other negotiations were profoundly interesting and when they did finally say yes I just could not believe it and I did not believe it until it made it to air

Not to diminish the extent to which you made this happen, and you are a hero because you did make it happen, but to what extent do you think this was a kind of PR screw-up as much as it was a Sam McAllister victory?

Yeah, I mean, I think really because Prince Andrew, you know, made his own decisions. And I think having spent a lot of time with very powerful people, the thing that you learn very quickly is that this is no disrespect to anyone who works in PR, who works, you know, sort of like as special advisors to ministers or any of those kinds of things. But people have drunk the Kool-Aid.

That's kind of part of the job. The MO of the job is that you believe in the principle, that you defend him or her, that you think that they're amazing, you tell them they're amazing. And the higher you rise, the fewer people you have around me being an absolute pain in the butt like I am, kind of saying, well, actually, well, no, you're not going to be good at that. That's not a thing. So in a sense, I don't think there was any fault on the part of the PR team

I think it's an act of persuasion to persuade a man in that position to take the risk on himself effectively, that he thought he would be able to make a good explanation of himself,

that the British public would believe that explanation. And in a sense, he would be able to return to the extraordinary life that he had enjoyed, you know, a war hero. I mean, he was basically a sex symbol back in the day. You know, he was kind of like, he was, you know, he was a thing. And now he was this sort of, you know, pariah. So I think really that the art of the conversation is absolute honesty and openness about the risks, um,

and absolute honesty about the possibility because it was possible that he could have turned that around and changed his life back to somewhat like it had been. But unfortunately, he really, really misunderstood his own capacity and capability.

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Did you ever feel sorry for him? Have you ever felt sorry for him? Because he was clearly so far removed from reality. Did you feel pity for him? No, no, not really. I mean, the thing is, you know, he was and is, and he was always very nice to me. So I have no kind of like criticism of him in the way that he behaved with me. That's all you can do. You take as you find.

But the thing about it is, is that if you imagine the average person in a vulnerable position and having worked as a criminal defense barrister, you know, I've been with very vulnerable people with no resources.

Prince Andrew had every resource in the world. There was every capacity to have people around him or train himself or to take legal advice or to decide not to do it. There was not any sort of misunderstanding about what was on the table. It was clear the questions would be fair. It's Emily Maitlis. That's not gonna be an easy ride.

There was no conditions, no agreements, no nothing. And so he exposed himself to that massive risk and he fell very, very short. But I respect him enough to say, I think he now knows it didn't go well. We gave him a fair opportunity and that opportunity was horribly squandered by those terrible, terrible answers.

Did you have any contact with his team afterwards? I did, I did. What did they say? Well, I became very close to Amanda because obviously the thing about being the second in command as she was or like the 32nd in command as I was is that you both have real skin in the game. You know if something goes wrong, one of you is going to lose your job.

It's not going to be, you know, Emily or Prince Andrew. So you have that kind of like fundamental understanding of the risk that you face as the more junior members of the team. Of course, she did lose her job as a result of this interview. And yeah, we stayed in touch. You know, I spent many months speaking with her and she could have ruined my life.

I don't have any proof that I didn't lie or mislead. I mean, I know I didn't, but I can't prove that. And so when everything went so badly for him, all it would have taken would have been, you know, one well-placed briefing against me if she wasn't a woman of integrity. It would have taken one phone call to some very expensive lawyers, and I was on a BBC income bringing up a kid on my own part-time. She knew all of that about me, and she never...

ever did. So I have the utmost respect for her integrity and obviously you feel a modicum of regret that she lost her job of course but we both knew what the stakes were and yeah we did stay in touch.

I imagine it must have been very surreal for you to see your book, your life, turned into a Netflix movie and to be played by Billie Piper. - So, because when you say it, it sounds so mad. - It really happened. That actually happened, right, yeah. - So did you work with Billie? I mean, how did you get her to embody you? How did that work out? - Well, I was really lucky because I was the exec on the project, because Netflix very kindly optioned my book.

And you never believe it's actually gonna make it to air, right? I think it's like 0.00001% that actually do. But I spent loads of time with Billie. So we met quite early on. She revealed later on in an interview actually that I'm very partial to a gin martini. And so when I met her, I ordered a gin martini within like 2.3 nanoseconds. And she had one too. And then she revealed, I think it was to Vogue or something that she'd never had one before. So she had two gin martinis and a salad

and she's very, very slim. So she must have not been able to feel her feet.

But, you know, she struggled on. But, yeah, we just spent time together. So it was everything from showing pictures of my happiest moments, which was me, like, dancing in the toilet with one of my besties, videos of me walking, because I'd explained that there were two things I felt were really crucial, kind of like my soul, my heart, in a sense. You know, I'm a scrappy, underdog, you know, heart of gold kind of girl, working class made good, single parent, like a cheeky kebab, all that kind of stuff.

But also the walk. So she would practice the walk with me, the ridiculous high heels, the always wearing black or brown, no other colors are available in my palette. But she would just spend hours and hours with me. So...

I think it was very generous of her, but it must have also been a bit bonkers, because on set people couldn't tell us apart. There were various silly articles, funny articles of me kissing my boyfriend, for example, where they thought it was Billy Piper with a new man. So it was a real strange, surreal, magical experience, but she put in lots of hours with me. So I felt that she really, really cared about that extra responsibility. And she said she took the job,

because she hadn't known about me. She thought I was an unsung heroine and she wanted to make me sing. So I'm very grateful to her that she said yes. Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This was produced by myself, Mia Sorrenti, and it was edited by Bea Duncan.

Don't forget, Intelligence Squared Premium subscribers can listen to the event in full and ad-free. Head to intelligencesquared.com forward slash membership to find out more, or hit the IQ2 Extra button on Apple for a free trial. And if you'd like to come along to one of our live events, you can visit intelligencesquared.com forward slash attend to see what we have coming up. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.

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