Emily amazed NOTHING was off limits
IT TOOK Emily Maitlis 13 years to become Newsnight’s lead presenter after joining the programme’s roster of hosts.
But last night’s forensic interrogation of Prince Andrew will cement her reputation as one of the most formidable TV interviewers .
‘This will put her on the map, well beyond Britain and on to the world stage,’ said leading talent agent Alan Edwards of the Outside Organisation, who has represented The Rolling Stones and the Beckhams.
‘She’s a very bright interviewer and a very intelligent person, but this interview is a huge scoop for any broadcast journalist.’
Her steely demeanour and unflappable manner, familiar to politicians, were on display last night as she grilled Andrew.
Yesterday she admitted how surprised she was that Andrew and his advisers had agreed beforehand that no subject would be off-limits.
‘That was the extraordinary thing,’ she told the Today programme on Radio 4. ‘I was expecting to be told it’s beneath the BBC to be questioning a senior Royal about his sexual history, and to be fair to the Duke of York we had no comeback, there was no question that he didn’t address, there was nothing that was off-limits.’
Some observers have compared the programme’s likely effect on her career to that of Martin Bashir’s 1995 Panorama interview with Diana, Princess Of Wales which catapulted him to several highprofile interviews, including with
Michael Jackson. Later he became an anchor on ABC programme Nightline in the US.
For much of Maitlis’s time at Newsnight, Jeremy Paxman was the undisputed top dog on the BBC’s flagship news programme, but since he left in 2014, her influence has quietly but steadily grown.
Following the departure of controversial editor and former Guardian journalist Ian Katz two years ago, she has been at the heart of bringing the programme back to its roots as a heavyweight, serious news programme. Its presenting team, with Maitlis flanked by Kirsty Wark and Emma Barnett, is the first all-female line-up on BBC news and current affairs. Editor Esme Wren completes a quartet.
The Andrew interview is Maitlis’s biggest coup to date and comes after the 49-year-old mother-of-two won the prestigious network presenter of the year title at this year’s Royal Television Society Awards.
Born in Canada to a scientist and a psychotherapist, Maitlis is the only Newsnight presenter not to have attended a private school.
She went to well-regarded King Edward VII School in Sheffield, alongside another presenter-to-be, Julia Bradbury, who went on to appear on Watchdog and Countryfile.
Maitlis read English at Queen’s College, Cambridge, and speaks several languages. After university she cut her journalistic teeth in Hong Kong as a business reporter and met her future husband Mark Gwynne, now a hedge fund boss.
Maitlis may be a formidable interviewer, but there is also a softer side. On a trip to cover the Syrian refugee crisis she took clothes that her sons, Milo and Max, had outgrown and distributed them to refugee children off-camera.