BBC Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis says her 2019 interview with Prince Andrew is important in a civil case brought forward against him by Jeffrey Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre

News presenter Emily Maitlis has revealed her thoughts on her infamous interview with sidelined royal Prince Andrew.

Prince Andrew gave an interview to Maitlis in 2019 about his former relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In the interview he denied any close friendship with the shamed billionaire.

Currently, a judge in New York City is deciding whether or not to allow Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre the chance to pursue a civil case against Prince Andrew, after she claimed that the he sexually assaulted her when she was 17.

Prince Andrew was interviewed about the alleged incidents by Maitlis for BBC Newsnight.

The royal has always denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crime.

Recently, the former friend of Andrew and ex-girlfriend of Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty on five counts of the charges brought against her, which included the sex trafficking of a minor.

Of the interview in 2019, Maitlis has said the interview could be crucial to any potential civil case.

So who is Emily Maitlis?

Who is Emily Maitlis?

Emily Maitlis is a journalist and newsreader for the BBC, born in Canada in 1970.

She has become known for her no-nonsense interviewing style and her interview with Prince Andrew won Maitlis the award for Daily News Programme of the Year and Interview of the Year award at Royal Television Society Awards in early 2020.

She is currently the lead presenter on BBC Two’s Newsnight, which features in-depth investigations into major issues both political and social.

In 2020, she was found to have breached impartiality guidelines with an opening comment regarding former government adviser Dominic Cummings claiming he had ‘broken the rules’ on lockdown at the time.

What is Prince Andrew’s sweating condition?

Virginia Giuffre, formerly Virginia Roberts, is attempting to bring forward a civil case against Prince Andrew claiming he sexually abused her at Ghislaine Maxwell’s home in London, Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan homes and Little St James in the Virgin Islands.

The accusations levelled at Prince Andrew involve alleged descriptions of profuse sweating, which he denied due to a ‘medical condition’ caused by the Falklands War.

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In the interview with Maitlis, Andrew said: “There is a slight problem with the sweating because I have a peculiar medical condition which is that I don’t sweat, or I didn’t sweat at the time because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War when I was shot at.

“It was almost impossible for me to sweat. It is only because I have done a number of things in the recent past that I am starting to be able to do that again.”

At the end of December 2021, lawyers were reported to be seeking proof of the duke’s supposed inability to sweat.

What has Emily Maitlis said?

Since the recent developments, Maitlis took to the BBC website to argue that the interview was important to the possibility of a civil case.

She said: “At the time, the specifics seemed almost comical. They spawned memes and riffs, quiz-show questions and stand-up routines. But now, suddenly, they feel deadly serious.”

“The answers the duke gave Newsnight in 2019, and the rest of his testimony to me that day, form a critical part of this landmark legal case. Ms Giuffre is suing the prince, claiming he sexually assaulted her when she was 17 – and a minor under US law. The duke denies the allegations.”

Maitlis insists that the interview was not conducted to try and catch the royal out, but to allow him to put forward his version of the events in response to the allegations made by Giuffre.

“The point of the interview was not to catch him out – I can’t stress this enough. The point of the interview was just to have a record of Prince Andrew’s own version of events,” she said.

Andrew has also stated that other events alleged by Giuffre could not have occurred due to him attending a children’s birthday party at a Pizza Express in Woking.