Michael Sheen Reveals Why He Would Never Want to Be a Member of the Royal Family

When preparing to portray Prince Andrew in Prime Video’s A Very Royal Scandal, actor Michael Sheen found one particular quirk in the royal’s mannerisms that stood out during his research. A Very Royal Scandal, which explores the events leading up to and following the infamous 2019 BBC Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis that effectively ended Prince Andrew’s royal career, is not Michael Sheen’s first time portraying a real-life figure. Known for his role as journalist David Frost in 2008’s Frost/Nixon, Sheen has also twice played former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair — in 2010’s The Special Relationship and 2006’s The Queen, which focused on Andrew’s mother, Queen Elizabeth. However, when it came to embodying Prince Andrew for Amazon’s three-part series, it was the Duke's distinctive laugh that stood out to Sheen. “In the research, when I’m looking at all the footage and interviews, I’m waiting for something to kind of jump up and grab me,” Sheen tells PEOPLE ahead of the show’s Sept. 19 release. “In every character that I’ve played, eventually something just kind of catches you and you go, ‘Oh.’ And sometimes it takes a little while before you realize that you’ve already found that moment and you go back to it. But there’s always something.”