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, just isn’t Michael Sheen’s first time portraying a real-life determine. Recognized 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 snicker 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 form of bounce up and seize me,” Sheen tells PEOPLE forward of the present’s Sept. 19 launch. “In each character that I’ve performed, ultimately one thing simply form of catches you and also you go, ‘Oh.’ And generally it takes a short while earlier than you notice that you just’ve already discovered that second and also you return to it. However there’s all the time 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, probably concerning army service. Andrew, who served in a unique department of the armed forces than William, makes a joke concerning the rivalry between the providers. “He says, ‘I ought to have stated try to be within the Navy,’ after which he laughs, and the snicker 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 approach. And that basically 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 snicker. However there was one thing about it that I assumed was fairly telling, in order that stayed with me.”

A bodily function stood out, too. “He has fairly distinguished tooth,” Sheen says of Prince Andrew. “He’s fairly toothy. So the mixture of the relish of this type 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 — residing in palaces and having all the pieces you need and servants and all that form of stuff. However the actuality appears to be that there are much more restrictions than there are freedoms. No quantity of wealth or belongings or privilege could make up for not with the ability to have fundamental kind of freedoms that a variety of us take with no consideration. So no, I’d not need to have that life.”

Taking part in Prince Andrew gave Sheen not solely into what it should be prefer to be a royal but additionally concerning the establishment of the monarchy itself, he says.

“I’d all the time fairly naively imagined that the media and the royal household had been fairly separate establishments,” he tells PEOPLE. “However then it turned clear that there’s all these kind of negotiations that go on between them, and there’s a form of, you recognize, ‘Properly, should you do that, then we’ll do this. And should you give us this interview, we’ll cover this factor.’ You recognize, it’s an actual — there are offers being achieved on a regular basis between the 2 establishments, which I discovered fascinating, and I didn’t notice that. That was a giant shock.”

Sheen explains that relating to portraying characters, particularly somebody like Prince Andrew,  he tries to faucet into what’s happening beneath the floor.

“What makes this particular person 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, “If you happen to don’t have that, if it’s simply the floor stuff and the tics and the bodily issues. An viewers may take pleasure in that for a few minutes, however you possibly can’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 practically 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 along with her when she was 17 years outdated. However the Newsnight footage wasn’t the one clip Sheen combed via — and he says he was notably moved by footage of Prince Andrew coming back from the Falklands Warfare “and seeing the adoration that he had,” Sheen says. “He got here again from the Falklands Warfare having genuinely achieved acts of braveness. I imply, he was proper within the thick of it. You’d suppose a royal can be evaded 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 hundreds upon hundreds of individuals simply cheering and shouting, and he appears to be like so engaging and horny and, you recognize, good-looking. And he’s there in his uniform and he’s essentially the most eligible bachelor, and he’s a prince. It’s like absolutely the peak of all the pieces. 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 often known 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 price and worth and satisfaction, 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 stunned by, for somebody who, regardless of being perceived as having such privilege, entitlement and what you’d think about is nice wealth, appeared, not less than from the surface, to be somebody who felt like they had been being denied a lot. A part of the draw in 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 appeared to be drawn to a group the place he can be handled like a prince. [He] didn’t really feel like he was being handled like a prince in his personal nation one way or the other. 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 army 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 relation to 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 Wonderful Order of the British Empire (OBE) for providers to drama from Queen Elizabeth in 2009, the Welsh actor quietly handed again the award after wanting 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 bear in mind sitting there going, ‘Properly, 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 offer 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 convention began in 1301 when King Edward I gave his son the title of Prince of Wales to subdue a Welsh insurrection. “These items have energy,” Sheen stated. 

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