Emily Maitlis was astonished when Prince Andrew quizzed her back in 2019 on whether she’d ever been abused.

The former BBC Newsnight journalist had been summoned to Buckingham Palace to discuss the possibility of a tell-all interview with Prince Andrew. The royal was known to have been a pal of the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was accused of sex trafficking.

He welcomed Emily Maitlis to a pre-interview meeting, accompanied by his daughter Beatrice and his secretary Amanda Thirsk. That was when he dropped the bombshell question, leaning forward and asking Emily and her colleagues: “Have any of you ever been victims of abuse?”

Viewers were on the edges of their seats, as dramatised scenes of the meeting aired on Thursday in the first episode of the new show A Very Royal Scandal. Amanda Thirsk (played by Joanna Scanlan) suggested that if Emily had been an abuse survivor herself in the past, then it could prejudice her perception of Andrew and prevent her from viewing him fairly.

Emily insisted she hadn’t been, but later confided in her husband that the interrogation had felt “horrible”. When Andrew – portrayed by Michael Sheen – probed again: “Nothing in your life?” and she declared: “Nothing that bares comparison.”

Amanda then chimed in, asking: “Your judgement wouldn’t be coloured by anything at all?”

She reassured Andrew – something which helped secure her the now notorious interview – but then, during a later conversation with her husband, brought up that she’d once been stalked.

“[What did I say about it?] Well nothing, having a stalker is not remotely comparable,” she told him, adding defiantly: “I don’t want to talk about it.”

A man who attended Cambridge University with her back in the 1990s, Edward Vines, bombarded her with unsolicited letters over a period of almost three decades.

He continued to write to her even from prison in Nottingham and – after attempting to breach a restraining order for the 20th time – he was jailed for eight years.

For her part, Emily has described his condition as an “obsessional illness” – one which the judge prosecuting him warned could be a “life-long” problem.

Meanwhile, back on the show, Emily was depicted asking Andrew if anything was omitted from the interview that he’d wanted to discuss – and he replied: “You didn’t include my alibi!”

Andrew had insisted he’d been at Pizza Express with his daughter on the day that he allegedly behaved improperly with Virginia Giuffre, but this was not brought up – and Emily suggested doing so would make him look “worse”.

Earlier this week Express.co.uk shared the one scene Emily had wanted to include in A Very Royal Scandal but which the writer insisted on leaving out, while we also revealed the unusual reason Emily was banned from the film set.