Peacock
Prince Andrew’s reputation has been forever tarnished by his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, Virginia Giuffre’s accusations that he sexually assaulted her when she was a minor, and the November 2019 BBC Two Newsnight interview about those scandals that was designed to stop the bad-PR bleeding but instead decimated his attempts at damage control and made him look even guiltier than before. Banished: Prince Andrew won’t alleviate his troubles.
Premiering October 5 on Peacock, director Jamie Crawford’s feature-length documentary takes the late Queen Elizabeth II’s second son to the proverbial toolshed, slamming him so repeatedly and thoroughly that one almost expects a referee to materialize to call the fight off. It’s character assassination of the most brutal, and deserved, kind.
There’s nothing revelatory in Banished: Prince Andrew, but there’s plenty of entertainment to be had from its comprehensive and vicious evisceration. “The problem is, the man’s an idiot,” declares former royal press secretary Dickie Arbiter, adding “There’s always one runt of the litter, and Andrew was it.” He’s a man with “acquired situational narcissism” according to editor-at-large Helen Kirwan-Taylor, who also calls him a “brat.” “He was very spoiled,” opines Majesty Magazine editor-in-chief Ingrid Seward. The Daily Beast founding editor-in-chief and The Palace Papers author Tina Brown dubs him “infantilized” and his behavior “beyond the pale.” Retired Royal Protection Officer Paul Page describes him as “just a horrible person, a bully.” On and on it goes, with just about every one of the film’s many talking heads making no bones about their opinions regarding Andrew’s immaturity, entitlement, licentiousness, and stupidity. It’s a doozy.