After decades of traveling the world filming the jaw-dropping documentaries about a series of hard-hitting topics, Louis Theroux is spending some time closer to home with his BBC series, Louis Theroux Interviews, which is returning for a second series.
A far cry from the days of interviewing Scientologists or staring down neo-Nazis, the beloved documentarian spent his 2020 interviewing stars on his lockdown podcast series, Grounded with Louis Theroux. Seeing its potential, Louis changed the format of his interview series to television, and in season one had in-depth interviews with the likes of Dame Judi Dench and Stormzy.
Now, in season two with Joan Collins, Raye and Anthony Joshua among his subjects, Louis tells us what goes into landing unprecedented access to household names.
His decision to make a series closer to home comes, among other things, from a place of wanting to spend more time with family; his wife Nancy Stranger and their three sons, Frederick, Albert and Walter.
“It was a way of working which made less demands and required me to go away less as someone with some relatively young family and three boys who are growing up fast,” Louis told HELLO! and other reporters. “I thought if I could just not be away for so many months of the year that would be really good.”
The decision has led to landing impressive celebrity line-ups for his show, but it doesn’t always go smoothly. Louis reveals that some stars dropped out of season two for a variety of reasons. “I don’t think I can say who I can say who [dropped out] but I think I could say, sometimes it's totally understandable as in mental health issues. Sometimes it's less understandable and the reasons appear to be more mysterious.
“Sometimes it's to do with a requirement that the person has that they have some sort of editorial approval. And that just can't happen… we can't actually say, ‘Oh, if you don't like it, we’ll change.’ At that point it becomes a totally different exercise.”
As a matter of courtesy, Louis always screens the episode to the subject before it airs, and says he is “open” to changes so long as it doesn’t “compromise the integrity of the film”. The perfect example here was when Joan Collins recently watched her episode.
Louis says, “[In the episode] I called her the highest paid actress in the world in the Dynasty era and she said, ‘TV actress!’ Which was like, ‘Okay, good spot. TV actress.’”
In another instance, he discusses his When Louis Met series, where he honoured a request by Ann Widdicombe after her mother was filmed reading one of her poems. “When I did a programme with Ann Widdicombe, Ann was like, ‘That poem reflects badly on my mum,’” he explains. “And she was saying, she felt her mum being elderly and not understanding television, that it shouldn't be in, so we did take that out.”
Season one of his documentary series even may have led to some real-life results after Stormzy spoke about his regret in a previous relationship, seemingly to refer to his ex-girlfriend Maya Jama. When asked if he thinks he played a part in the couple’s reconciliation after they confirmed that they were back together in 2023, Louis says: “I have no idea whether I played any role but it seems unlikely. If you listen to that album, I think it’s called ‘This is What I Mean’ . I think a lot of the album is about lost love that you might assume would be Maya Jama, right? So I'm going to reject as unconfirmed any idea that I had any role and, but I am pleased to see any kind of romance blossoming between two wonderful, talented and very attractive people, right?”
That being said, would he go to the wedding? “If I was invited, I would definitely go,” says Louis.
Despite his interest in speaking to the stars, Louis says he won’t be doing the show forever. “This isn’t what I do from now on,” he explains. “That's not how I see it. So, the idea of taking on subjects where it's people I maybe don't like quite so much, that's definitely still something I would hope to do.”