Controversial King Charles comment in new Amazon Prime sparks legal issues

A Very Royal Scandal is set to be very different from its Netflix predecessor, Scoop, as Emily Maitlis - the woman who conducted the now notorious BBC Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew back in 2019 - is an executive producer on the show.

Arguably few people could bring the Amazon Prime drama to life better than the woman who is portrayed as one of the main characters in it - and she shares her production role with Karen Thrussell. The latter was left "tearing her hair out" in frustration after lawyers warned her about some of the content, however - and she candidly revealed all during a no-holds-barred Q&A.

"We approached [the legal minefield] with a lot of people. Every single script got sent to lawyers," Karen revealed. "Writer Jeremy Brock was pulling his hair out sometimes because there'd be things that that we thought were just really funny, and we would not be allowed to use them!"

However, one amusing reference did get past the censors - one characterising King Charles as 'Mr. Tampon'. "As we know, that's a matter on public record!" Karen joked.

The reference dates back to a transcript of a racy phone call between Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles (now the Queen) three months after he'd split from Princess Diana, which was printed in full in People magazine in 1989. Charles expressed his desire to "just live inside your trousers" and went on to say he wanted to be reincarnated as Camilla's tampon.

She quizzed during their sex chat: "What are you going to turn into, a pair of knickers? Oh, you're going to come back as a pair of knickers."

He replied: "Or God forbid, a Tampax. Just my luck!"

As the discussion is already public knowledge - and went on to be dramatised in an episode of The Crown - there were no legal issues surrounding it, and the Mr. Tampon reference could remain in the script.

However, everything else was rigorously "checked and checked and checked" - and Karen is "not allowed" even to divulge which "comedy" lines were axed by the production's exacting lawyers.

Asked whether the over-zealous legal process had deterred her from producing it, she admitted: "Well, it did a bit! I was tearing my hair out!"

She added: "You have to be careful because obviously we don't want to upset people unnecessarily either. You have a duty of care."

Meanwhile, Karen also admitted that it had been nerve-wracking to meet Prince Andrew interviewer Emily Maitlis face-to-face, confessing: "Obviously you meet lots of actors and writers in this business, but actually meeting somebody from Newsnight is obviously much scarier!"

All three episodes of A Very Royal Scandal are available exclusively on Prime Video from Thursday 19 September.