Andrew’s Epstein dinner ‘was like an erotic drama’
US TV anchor recounts ‘creepy’ party ...and says Harry ‘smelt of cigarettes and alcohol’ when she met him in Brazil
PRINCE Andrew’s infamous final dinner with Jeffrey Epstein was like a steamy Stanley Kubrick film, a US TV host who was there has claimed.
Broadcaster Katie Couric, who has spent decades presenting some of America’s best-known current affairs shows, was one of the select guests at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse alongside the Duke of York in 2010, she revealed in a new book.
Among the famous faces she has interviewed is Prince Harry, who she mocks in her memoir Going There. When she met Harry in Brazil in 2012, he was still in his ‘wild-oats sowing phase’, she said, adding that the smell of cigarettes and alcohol seemed to ‘ooze from every pore’ in his body.
Ms Couric said the night at Epstein’s reminded her of Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick’s erotic drama about sexual fantasies, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.
The $76million mansion had ‘creepy body-part art’ and very young girls collecting the coats of guests at the party, thrown in honour of Andrew, the journalist said.
In her memoir, Ms Couric claimed that Epstein and Andrew were ‘trying to cultivate friends in the media’ during the evening, which was also attended by Woody Allen and his wife Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of Allen’s former actress wife Mia Farrow.
Ms Couric, 64, said that the dinner had been pitched by American PR expert Peggy Siegal as a chance to meet Andrew at Epstein’s home, the largest residential property in New York on the famed Upper East Side.
Meanwhile, the duke was seen smiling and waving yesterday as he drove out of Balmoral, the Queen’s Scottish estate, where he has spent the past three weeks.
Epstein’s home was like ‘Eyes Wide Shut with a twist – creepy chandeliers and body-part art’, Ms Couric wrote. Guests ate lasagne out of shallow bowls and Epstein ‘held court’ in front of the fireplace as the guests mingled.
Ms Couric’s boyfriend remarked how young the women were who took their coats, she added.
The journalist said: ‘I couldn’t imagine what Epstein and Andrew were up to, apart from trying to cultivate friends in the media. Which,
‘High society in his orbit’
in retrospect, [Epstein] must have figured they’d need when the paedophilia charges [against Epstein] started rolling in.’
Others at the party included comedian Chelsea Handler, who said earlier this year: ‘When we got there I was like, “What is this gathering?” Oh yeah, Prince Andrew was there.’
Andrew, 61, has claimed that he was only staying with Epstein in 2010 to end their decade-long friendship. The pair were pictured in Central Park.
Epstein had by then already served a 13-month prison term for having sex with underage girls.
In his interview with BBC Newsnight in 2019, the duke said: ‘Oh, in 2010, there certainly wasn’t a party to celebrate his release in December because it was a small dinner party... if there was a party, then I’d know nothing about that.’
Andrew added that staying with Epstein was the ‘honourable and right thing to do’ as he was ending their friendship.
Andrew is being sued in a New York court by Epstein’s ‘sex slave’ Virginia Roberts who claims she was forced to have sex with him three times when she was 17. The duke has vehemently denied the allegations.
A friend of Andrew said: ‘The fact that Katie Couric attended a dinner party at Epstein’s house only demonstrates how many of New York’s high society and media revolved in Epstein’s orbit’.
In the 1990s, Ms Couric hosted Today, the breakfast show for US giant NBC, and later presented the Evening News on CBS.