ALISON BOSHOFF: Michael Sheen will play Prince Andrew as a ‘fallen hero’ in upcoming TV series about the Duke of York’s disastrous Newsnight interview

Michael Sheen says A Very Royal Scandal, the forthcoming Prime Video drama in which he plays Prince Andrew, will present his character as a fallen hero.

‘The story talks a lot about the Falklands War and Andrew’s involvement in it,’ Sheen explains. ‘It’s about a man who had a high point in his life — he was the dream prince when he returned from the Falklands — but who feels like he’s been falling away ever since.’

Sheen adds: ‘It also deals with America and Epstein — how they offered Andrew the chance to feel pretty good about himself again, and how he kind of got drawn into that world.’

It’s a bold move to present a sympathy-tinged depiction of Prince Andrew, who stepped down from public duties following the disastrous Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis in 2019.

In the interview, he memorably said it had been ‘seriously beneficial’ to him to have known Epstein, later convicted of paedophile offences. When they were pictured in Central Park after that conviction, the prince told Maitlis (played by Ruth Wilson) that he was in fact explaining to the financier, in person, that they could no longer be friends.

Sheen says: ‘We filmed it just before Christmas and I enjoyed doing it. We’ll see how it turns out.’

The psychological delve into what might have driven the prince to make that disastrous TV appearance will distinguish the show from its rival production on Netflix, Scoop. That film, based on a book of the same name by former Newsnight interview fixer Sam McAlister, concentrates on recreating the exchange shot by shot, and on the meetings that led up to it. Keeley Hawes plays Prince Andrew’s private secretary Amanda Thirsk, with Gillian Anderson as Maitlis.

Sources tell me they think the Netflix show is rather brutal in its presentation of the prince (Rufus Sewell). Another difference is that McAlister (played by Billie Piper) will be more prominent in the Netflix film. This may be because there is no love lost between her and former colleague Maitlis, an executive producer of the Prime series. Maitlis won’t indulge in that kind of talk in public — she’s got too much class — but she did say on her News Agents podcast that she is ‘terrified’ about being portrayed on screen.

Did Meghan want to produce the new Suits? 

The massive ‘second wind’ success of the TV drama Suits on Netflix has given a boost to the forthcoming LA-based spin-off.

Last week NBCUniversal announced it had ordered a pilot of Suits: LA which will be shot in March, in Vancouver.

Naturally the news has sparked a conversation (yet again) about whether Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, a Suits alumnus, might be involved. Sources close to the new show confirm that she has not opted to join the project as on-screen talent, even though there is a role which would have been perfect for her. However, the real dish is that she was apparently interested in getting involved as an executive producer, via her production company Archewell.

A source said: ‘Meghan was clear that she didn’t want to be involved as an actor. But Archewell was trying to wiggle its way in as a production company on the spin-off. NBC have killed that idea.’

Sources close to Archewell deny this vigorously and say the company would never have been involved in a reboot. Meghan played Rachel Zane in the show, leaving in 2017 after her romance with Prince Harry took off. The Suits cast were at last month’s Golden Globes, though Meghan was conspicuously absent. One who was there was American actress Gina Torres, who was once so close to Meghan that she was among the guests at St George’s Chapel in Windsor for the royal wedding in 2018. But speaking at the LA awards show, Torres said: ‘We don’t have her number. We just don’t.’

She said the rest of the cast kept in touch via a WhatsApp group. When the first eight seasons of the series were added to Netflix last year, the show went to the top of the streaming charts for months — and ultimately broke the record for the most ever No 1 appearances on the U.S. Nielsen ratings chart.

None of the original cast is attached to the spin-off and NBC has not yet named a lead star. The new show has been written by Aaron Korsh, who created Suits.

Meghan and Harry have a development deal at Netflix which is due to run out in September 2025. So far they have made a tell-all documentary about their lives (Harry & Meghan), plus a documentary about the Invictus Games.

Last year, Archewell acquired the rights to a romantic novel, Meet Me At The Lake, which the couple plan to adapt as a movie.

Netflix chief content officer Bela Bajaria said that there was a film and a series ‘in very early development’ from the Sussexes and added they have ‘a couple of unscripted things they’re working on’.

Will the Great British Bake Off leave Channel 4 for Netflix? Execs at the network, which is shedding jobs and slashing budgets, are keen to keep the show, despite speculation it might be too costly. I hear Richard McKerrow, boss of Love Productions which makes Bake Off, has said he will ‘never’ take his baby to the streamer. Although he stunned everyone by taking the show from BBC2 to Channel 4 in 2017. 

Oh, the poor things! Oscar favourite Emma’s pity for gloomy castmates 

Effervescent Emma Stone — a front runner for an Oscar next month for her role as Bella Baxter in Poor Things — says she was surrounded by gloomy men on set. Stone, 35, was in London last week and said co-star Mark Ruffalo and director Yorgos Lanthimos (both Oscar-nominated for Poor Things) were perennial doomsters.

Of Lanthimos, she said: ‘He’s very instinctual when it comes to the actual shooting of it. No one says: ‘Action!’ You kind of just do it, and they figure it out as it goes.

‘And when he says: ‘That’s enough of that’, that means we’re moving on. Throughout all of shooting, he’s like: ‘This is a disaster.’ ‘

Lanthimos, meanwhile, roused himself from his misery long enough to poke gentle fun at Ruffalo, who plays bounder Duncan Wedderburn in the movie.

‘Mark is one of the actors that I always wanted to work with,’ he said. ‘And then of course he was reluctant. Now that I know him better, I think he’s always reluctant.

‘Like, they offer him a part and then he goes: ‘Oh no, I’m not good. I’m not gonna do it. Why don’t you choose someone else? How am I gonna do this. No I can’t.’

‘And you just have to go: ‘No, Mark. You’re incredible. You can do it.’ ‘

Lanthimos had the audience at Bafta in stitches as he proved he is a fair mimic of Ruffalo. ‘Mark does impressions of me, too,’ he said. Stone concluded: ‘You and Mark really are kindreds. I totally understand why you two are like brothers.’

It’s a tale for our times: the makers of Botox and the cosmetic filler Juvederm are expecting a boom in business because of the widespread use in Hollywood of the slimming shot Ozempic — which can leave the newly skinny looking saggy or deflated in the face. Carrie Strom, an executive with AbbVie Inc, which manufactures the products, told investors: ‘We do see it [the Ozempic boom] as a long-term tailwind.’ 

When women ruled the World (Cup)… 

What was the biggest ever event in women’s sport? Many will suggest that it was the England-Spain World Cup Final last summer, watched by a live crowd of 75,000.

But actually it was the 1971 Women’s World Cup Final in Mexico City, where more than 110,000 fans packed into the Azteca Stadium to see the hosts play Denmark.

The amazing true story of this forgotten event is told in COPA 71, a thrilling, moving film featuring a wealth of never-seen footage.

Narrated by tennis legend Serena Williams and executive produced with her sister Venus, it will be in cinemas from March 8.

Carol Wilson and Trudy McCaffery of the British team (our ‘Lost Lionesses’) are among the interviewees.

They are joined by representatives of all the teams, including Italy’s ferocious Elena Schiavo. Teammates talk in awe about her physical power and sheer aggression, something which becomes evident in footage of an on-pitch brawl during a match against Mexico.

In the end, the ref had to stop the match ten minutes early.

The film tracks down members of each of the six teams involved (Argentina and France also took part) including Ann Stengard and Birte Kjems from the eventual winners, Denmark.

Media interviews at the time with the girls, most of them teenagers, show them being mobbed at the airport and their hotels — before returning home to countries that ignored or belittled their achievements.

Fifa, to its everlasting shame, told football clubs that women were not permitted to play on their facilities. An official Women’s World Cup was only inaugurated in 1991.

The film’s director Rachel Ramsay said: ‘The idea that women’s football did not progress because women didn’t want it to is a myth that’s been perpetuated for a long time, along with the idea that women’s football was never commercial, that women didn’t want to play and that women weren’t any good.

‘That’s what this film blasts out of the water.’

Actor David Suchet confides that Agatha Christie’s meticulous Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot is quite a hit with women. Suchet began playing Poirot in 1989, and his last outing as the dandified detective was in 2013, after 70 adventures, over 13 globally successful series.

He said: ‘Poirot seems to appeal to the ladies. There seems to be a great appreciation of the way he treats women, and makes them feel feminine.

‘I would say that over half — well over half — of my fan base in terms of letters and tweets and people waiting at the stage door tend to be women.’

Mon Dior! Ben’s Franglais is fearful 

The New Look for Apple TV+ is a super-prestige telling of the rivalry between Christian Dior and Coco Chanel, and what both had to do to survive in occupied Paris.

Chanel, played by Juliette Binoche, takes Hans Von Dincklage — a prominent Nazi official who spied for the Reich in Paris before the war — as a lover. He and Chanel lived together at the Ritz and, later, in Switzerland.

Dincklage is played by dishy Dane Claes Bang, who was JP in Bad Sisters and Dracula before that.

Bang joked that Von Dincklage (who was known as Spatz) was ‘a very lovely Nazi… the sweetest person you’ll ever meet’. Binoche, less jovially, said of her character: ‘She was trying to hold on to her life as much as she could to survive, because she is a survivor. I feel for her. At the same time, I wish she had made other choices.’

Others will judge for themselves, but I felt that Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn, who plays Dior, seemed to struggle with a Pepe Le Pew take on the French accent — oddly, he sounds far more French than his French co-star Binoche.

The show streams from February 14.

The final series of Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway is imminent on ITV, and their TV production company Mitre is clearly sensing that now is the moment to try to break out with a new format. They are advertising for a new recruit to the ‘development team’ and are looking for someone who is passionate about coming up with ‘innovative new ideas’. They have a new show in Limitless Win for ITV, but the BBC is having a renaissance with The Traitors and Michael McIntyre’s Big Show.

Not everything the boys touch turns to gold — remember the game shows PokerFace, Red Or Black? and Wanna Bet?