Former publicity maven Peggy Siegal once organized a dinner party for late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
“He was demanding, demanding, demanding to be invited all over,” Siegal, 78, told New York Magazine in a Wednesday, March 4, profile, recalling Epstein’s hopes to be invited to all the biggest parties. “He didn’t want to leave his house. He wanted everyone to come to his mansion so he could be in control, so he could manipulate his audience under this palatial roof where he lived. In order to look like the smartest person in the room, he had to be in his room.”
At one point, Epstein hosted a dinner party in honor of Andrew, now 66, at his New York City residence. Siegal, who said she had a “transactional” friendship with Epstein, further claimed that she didn’t want to help with the bash.
“I totally jeopardized my relationship with all these important people — they did not know who [Jeffrey] was,” she claimed to the outlet of curating the star-studded guest list. “All of Jeffrey’s illegal, immoral behavior was in Palm Beach, and he went to jail in Palm Beach, and the New York Times never wrote about him. … World-famous newscasters didn’t know who Jeffrey Epstein was, and they counted on my relationship with them to invite them to an interesting evening, which I had many, many times before. They came on my say-so.”
According to Siegal, she only agreed to throw Epstein’s party for Andrew to help put a copy of one of producer Harvey Weinstein’s films into Queen Elizabeth II’s hands. (Andrew was one of the sons of the late queen of England, who died in 2022 at age 96.)
The 10-person dinner allegedly featured guests such as Charlie Rose, George Stephanopoulos, Katie Couric, Chelsea Handler and Woody Allen, who mingled with Andrew while eating lasagna.
“They were told that there would be no palace guards around Andrew at dinner,” Siegal recalled. “They could ask him anything they wanted to know about [Prince William and Princess Kate Middleton’s 2011] wedding.”
According to the former publicist, Allen, now 90, only agreed to come because he was apparently told that he “could wear his chinos and his bucket cap.”
“I don’t think he would have come if he knew who Jeffrey was,” she speculated.
Epstein was found guilty of sex trafficking of a minor and conspiracy to transport minors with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity in a 2019 federal jury trial. He died by suicide at 66 that year while incarcerated at New York’s Metropolitan Detention Center.
Andrew’s association with Andrew, meanwhile, resurfaced in fall 2025 when the FBI released the “Epstein Files,” which included images of the two men together and their email exchanges. Upon the documents’ release, Andrew voluntarily gave up his HRH honorifics.
“In discussion with The King, and my immediate and wider family, we have concluded the continued accusations about me distract from the work of His Majesty and the Royal Family,” Andrew said in a statement shared with Us Weekly in October 2025. “I have decided, as I always have, to put my duty to my family and country first. I stand by my decision five years ago to stand back from public life.”
Andrew was arrested in February for alleged misconduct in public office, where he was accused of sharing confidential intel with Epstein when he served as a U.K. trade envoy. The former prince has not addressed the accusations.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
