Michael Sheen Would Not Wish to Be a Member of the Royal Household

When getting ready to painting Prince Andrew in Prime Video’s A Very Royal Scandal, actor Michael Sheen discovered one explicit quirk within the royal’s mannerisms that stood out throughout his analysis.

A Very Royal Scandal, which explores the occasions main as much as and following the notorious 2019 BBC Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis that successfully ended Prince Andrew’s royal profession, is just not Michael Sheen’s first time portraying a real-life determine. Identified for his position as journalist David Frost in 2008’s Frost/Nixon, Sheen has additionally twice performed former U.Ok. Prime Minister Tony Blair — in 2010’s The Particular Relationship and 2006’s The Queen, which centered on Andrew’s mom, Queen Elizabeth. Nevertheless, when it got here to embodying Prince Andrew for Amazon’s three-part collection, it was the Duke’s distinctive giggle that stood out to Sheen.

“Within the analysis, once I’m taking a look at all of the footage and interviews, I’m ready for one thing to type of leap up and seize me,” Sheen tells PEOPLE forward of the present’s Sept. 19 launch. “In each character that I’ve performed, finally one thing simply type of catches you and also you go, ‘Oh.’ And typically it takes a short time earlier than you notice that you simply’ve already discovered that second and also you return to it. However there’s at all times one thing.”

That second of revelation for Sheen got here whereas watching an interview Prince Andrew gave “perhaps 15 years in the past,” he remembers. Within the interview, Andrew is requested whether or not he had any recommendation for Prince William, seemingly concerning navy service. Andrew, who served in a unique department of the armed forces than William, makes a joke concerning the rivalry between the companies. “He says, ‘I ought to have stated you ought to be within the Navy,’ after which he laughs, and the giggle he does is so startling. It was kind of extraordinary. I’d by no means seen that earlier than — it was an uncovered second in a method. And that actually caught with me.”

It was jarring, Sheen explains, as a result of, “For the royal household, who’re normally so managed, attempting to maintain issues very a lot beneath the floor, it was a second of startling, stunning emotion — even when it was only a giggle. However there was one thing about it that I assumed was fairly telling, in order that stayed with me.”

A bodily characteristic stood out, too. “He has fairly outstanding tooth,” Sheen says of Prince Andrew. “He’s fairly toothy. So the mix of the relish of this sort of joke that he’d made after which these tooth — it was fairly stunning.”

Sheen has now performed a royal, however would he need to be a royal? “Completely not,” he tells PEOPLE. “No. The fairytale picture of it appears so extraordinary — dwelling in palaces and having every thing you need and servants and all that type of stuff. However the actuality appears to be that there are way more restrictions than there are freedoms. No quantity of wealth or property or privilege could make up for not with the ability to have primary kind of freedoms that a number of us take with no consideration. So no, I might not need to have that life.”

Enjoying Prince Andrew gave Sheen not solely into what it have to be wish to be a royal but in addition concerning the establishment of the monarchy itself, he says.

“I’d at all times fairly naively imagined that the media and the royal household have been fairly separate establishments,” he tells PEOPLE. “However then it grew to become clear that there’s all these kind of negotiations that go on between them, and there’s a type of, you realize, ‘Nicely, if you happen to do that, then we’ll try this. And if you happen to give us this interview, we’ll cover this factor.’ You realize, it’s an actual — there are offers being performed on a regular basis between the 2 establishments, which I discovered fascinating, and I didn’t notice that. That was an enormous shock.”

Sheen explains that in the case of portraying characters, particularly somebody like Prince Andrew,  he tries to faucet into what’s occurring beneath the floor.

“What makes this individual tick?” Sheen says of how he ready to play an individual very a lot nonetheless within the headlines, even after Andrew’s position as a working royal ended. “What are the issues that they need? And what do they suppose is stopping them from getting what they need?”

He provides, “When you don’t have that, if it’s simply the floor stuff and the tics and the bodily issues. An viewers would possibly get pleasure from that for a few minutes, however you may’t tolerate that for a three-hour collection. There needs to be one thing extra substantial.”

The obvious footage for Sheen to review as he ready to play the royal was the gripping interview that aired almost 5 years in the past, the place veteran journalist Emily Maitlis (performed by Ruth Wilson in A Very Royal Scandal) requested Prince Andrew concerning the scandalous accusations he confronted concerning his involvement with convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein and Virginia Guiffre, who accused Andrew of getting intercourse together with her when she was 17 years previous. However the Newsnight footage wasn’t the one clip Sheen combed by — and he says he was significantly moved by footage of Prince Andrew getting back from the Falklands Warfare “and seeing the adoration that he had,” Sheen says. “He got here again from the Falklands Warfare having genuinely performed acts of braveness. I imply, he was proper within the thick of it. You’d suppose a royal could be refrained from hazard, however he was proper within the thick of it.”

Sheen says that “he comes again and there’s that footage of him dockside when he comes off the boat. And there are 1000’s upon 1000’s of individuals simply cheering and shouting, and he appears to be like so enticing and horny and, you realize, good-looking. And he’s there in his uniform and he’s probably the most eligible bachelor, and he’s a prince. It’s like absolutely the peak of every thing. And to consider how since that second, his life could possibly be perceived as being a kind of downward trajectory the place he will get older, he places on weight, he loses his appears to be like a bit. He will get additional and additional away from the middle of energy of being what’s referred to as the ‘spare.’ The brother who’s by no means going to be king. As [King] Charles has kids and he will get additional and additional away, and all these issues that will need to have given him a way of his value and worth and delight, all these issues ebb away. So it was that footage of him coming again [that] had a big impact on me.”

Reflecting on what he realized concerning the Duke of York, Sheen says, “I used to be very shocked by, for somebody who, regardless of being perceived as having such privilege, entitlement and what you’d think about is nice wealth, appeared, no less than from the surface, to be somebody who felt like they have been being denied a lot. A part of the draw in the direction of Epstein was not solely that there was some monetary assist there. {That a} prince could possibly be in cash hassle appeared extraordinary. Somebody who you suppose goes to be extremely rich appeared to have cash troubles and in addition gave the impression to be drawn to a neighborhood the place he could be handled like a prince. [He] didn’t really feel like he was being handled like a prince in his personal nation someway. That I discovered extraordinary. And fairly shocking that somebody who seems to have a lot might expertise their life as having comparatively little.”

Quickly after the Newsnight interview aired, Prince Andrew introduced he was stepping again from public duties, and in January 2022, Queen Elizabeth stripped him of his navy titles and patronages amid Guiffre’s civil sexual assault lawsuit that has since been settled. Prince Andrew has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

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In terms of Sheen and the royal household, the actor took a decisive step away from the establishment in his personal life: in 2017, eight years after receiving a Most Glorious Order of the British Empire (OBE) for companies to drama from Queen Elizabeth in 2009, the Welsh actor quietly handed again the award after trying into the historical past of the connection between England and Wales for the 2017 Raymond Williams Society lecture, PEOPLE beforehand reported.

“By the point I had completed writing that lecture…I keep in mind sitting there going, ‘Nicely, I’ve a selection — I both don’t give this lecture and maintain on to by OBE, or I give this lecture and I’ve to provide my OBE again,’” Sheen stated in a dialog with The Guardian columnist Owen Jones. 

Regardless of feeling “extremely honored” at receiving the award, Sheen expressed discomfort with practices resembling handing the Prince of Wales title to an English-born inheritor to the throne — a practice began in 1301 when King Edward I gave his son the title of Prince of Wales to subdue a Welsh revolt. “These items have energy,” Sheen stated. 

In 2017, when Sheen returned the award, King Charles was nonetheless Prince of Wales; in 2022, following the demise of Queen Elizabeth, the title handed to his eldest son, Prince William, who holds it at this time.