Inside Emily Maitlis’ toxic feud with TV producer who claims she landed infamous Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew
THE two women behind Prince Andrew’s 2019 car crash Newsnight interview are no longer on speaking terms, The Sun can reveal.
Tensions are running high between Emily Maitlis, who quizzed the disgraced royal, and Sam McAlister, the former BBC producer who helped secure the interview,
Maitlis, 53, whose reported £325,000-a-year earnings were ten times her newsroom rival’s, has failed to acknowledge McAlister’s role in making possible the chat with the Duke of York.
The strain between the two heightened at a party just before Christmas when the broadcaster “snubbed” the producer.
Fuelling the rivalry further, award-winning journalist Maitlis her own three-part series coming out later this year on rival streamer, Amazon Prime.
Last night a source said: “The irony is that this is essentially a story about two successful, independent women working together and landing a massive story — one with global reach.
“By rights, they should be one another’s biggest champions.
“But each feels as if their part has been under-sold by the other, and there is huge tension there.
“At a celebrity party at Christmas, it was very award as both women were in the same room. The tension was palpable.
“Sam approached Emily in front of quite a few people and suggested they bury the hatchet, and start afresh.
“But Emily seemed reluctant to engage and essentially turned her back on Sam. Everyone was talking about it afterwards.
“Obviously they now have two films out about the same topic on rival streamers, and both want their own to be a hit.
It is based on McAlister’s account of the chat in her book called Scoops.
Maitlis, meanwhile, is the executive producer of A Very Royal Scandal, a three-part series. It will star Michael Sheen, 55, as Andrew.
Clare Calbraith, 50, who appeared in Downton Abbey, plays McAlister, and Golden Globe winner Ruth Wilson, 42, plays Maitlis.
Maitlis, meanwhile, makes no mention of the Netflix drama on her feed on Twitter/X. Asked if she would be tuning in to, she said, somewhat dismissively, she would “get around to it at some stage”.
Maitlis, who quit the BBC two years ago, said: “I’ve left them very much to do their own thing because I think the last thing they want is me peeking around the edges offering my [views].
“It says it’s based on a fictional account, so I think it goes into different places and it does different things [to the Amazon series].”
The phrase “fictional account” is unlikely to sit well with McAlister, who has herself done a round of interviews to promote her role in the scoop.
