Prince Andrew brushed shoulders with director Woody Allen and his wife Soon-Yi Previn at a party hosted in his "honour" by Jeffrey Epstein, the 89-year-old filmmaker has said.
The couple of 27 years shared new details about the meeting, where Ms Previn revealed she "couldn't stand" the Duke of York after the encounter.
In New York, December 2010, Mr Allen and Ms Previn were neighbours of the billionaire financier, Jeffrey Epstein - who had been convicted in Florida of procuring a child for prostitution and solicitation in 2008.
That month, the couple were invited to a dinner party at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse where the Duke of York was to be the "guest of honour".
Filmmaker Woody Allen and his wife Soon-Yi Previn have spoken about meeting Prince Andrew at a party hosted by Jeffrey Epstein
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“Someone, a publicist, invited Soon-Yi and me to a dinner at Jeffrey’s house with one of those British royals,” the director began.
“I can’t remember the name because I don’t follow the royals with any interest at all,” Mr Allen continued.
When asked it was Andrew, the filmmaker confirmed and added: “Soon-Yi wanted to meet him, so we went over for dinner.”
However, Ms Previn explained her excitement soon dissipated when she encountered the Duke of York.
Mr Allen's wife revealed she 'couldn't stand' the Duke of York when she met him at the party
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“I couldn’t stand him. He was such a dullard!” she said while rolling her eyes.
The director shared that there were “about twenty people” attending the soiree but was reticent to name any of the other guests.
“We didn’t know Jeffrey at all then, but we see all these people there and they all embraced him, so we figured, ‘OK, he’s a substantial character,” Mr Allen told The Times.
Regarding the well reported conviction of their host, the director recalled Epstein describing himself as “falsely put in jail” and “extorted”.
Epstein hosted the dinner party in December 2010, just months after his release following his conviction for 'procuring a child for prostitution and solicitation' two years earlier
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At the time of the party, Prince Andrew was staying at Epstein’s home for the purpose of breaking up their friendship following the financier’s conviction.
“I went there with the sole purpose of saying to him that because he had been convicted, it was inappropriate for us to be seen together,” the duke said in his disastrous 2019 Newsnight interview.
When pressed by interviewer Emily Maitlis on the event being held in December 2010, the duke revealed he had attended a “small dinner party”.
“There were only eight or 10 of us I think at the dinner,” he added.
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Andrew defended his appearance at the 2010 party 'in his honour' during his fateful Newsnight interview
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“You were invited to that dinner as a guest of honour,” the Newsnight host put to him.
“Well I was there so there was a dinner, I don't think it was quite as you might put it but yeah, OK I was there for… I was there at a dinner, yeah,” Andrew responded.
Regarding staying at Epstein’s home, the duke said: “It was a convenient place to stay... At the end of the day, with a benefit of all the hindsight that one can have, it was definitely the wrong thing to do.
“At the time I felt it was the honourable and right thing to do, and I admit fully that my judgement was probably coloured by my tendency to be too honourable but that's just the way it is,” he added.