Why do people open up to me? Having glasses and being a bit of a geek doesn’t hurt
As Louis Theroux returns with a gripping series about birth, love and death in the US, he tells KERRI-ANN ROPER why he thinks people are willing to tell him their stories and which A-list star he would most like to interview
IT IS 20 years since awardwinning documentary maker Louis Theroux first hit our screens with his pioneering series Weird Weekends.
Now Louis, 48, is back on BBC2 with a three-part series about the unusual ways modern America deals with birth, love and death.
Here he reveals the ups and downs of the filming process and what he learnt from making Louis Theroux’s Altered States.
This series covers polyamory, adoption and assisted dying. Why did you want to cover these topics?
ALTERED States was an attempt to take a look at the most intimate and most difficult sides of life (birth, love and death), in an American context, and specifically ways in which increasingly these issues are being handled differently.
Full disclosure – the series was incubated over a few months and slightly on the fly – we didn’t sit down and think, “We’re going to do a three-parter called Altered States”. It kind of evolved.
Why cover these topics?
I WAS interested in the difficulty of mothers of newborns handing over their babies for adoption.
And then, around the same time we began talking about the way in which dying is changing in America and specifically that people with terminal illnesses in certain states can now opt to be prescribed life-ending medication.
And finally, polyamory (consensual non-monogamous relationships) came up as a subject and we noticed that all of these, in different ways, were attempts to deal with age-old situations in a new way.
How willing to discuss these things were people?
AS ever, there’s an issue around anything that’s massively stressful and intimate. Although perhaps it’s easier in America than in the UK, where I guess people have fewer hang-ups about putting things out in a public sphere.
I was aware, especially with the film which we’re calling Choosing Death, in which we follow three families – well, there are two families really, and one woman, whose husband has died – who are approaching this decision of wishing to end their lives due to either pain and suffering or terminal illness.
And I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so anxious about whether we would get the contributors, going into it.
What do you think it is about you that makes people open up?
AS much as I’d like to take credit, I think the advance work that’s been done by the team is absolutely critical. The team that goes (there) in advance of me are sort of the ambassadors for the project. They do a wonderful job of finding people and sort of assuring them.
For my own part, I just try to be a decent person. I think having glasses and being a bit of a geek probably doesn’t hurt. I think I’m naturally quite a tentative and insecure person, and paradoxically I think sometimes that has its advantages.
People can see me maybe as someone who actually isn’t going to be a bully, and who is basically trying very hard to read the signals that are coming back, and not be a d**k.
You’ve been making your documentaries for 20 years. You’ve never done a pantomime or reality TV. Is that a deliberate decision?
“WELL I did The Weakest Link Celebrity Special, I did (the) Pointless Celebrity Special, I did Mastermind Alumni.
So a quiz, I’m a sucker for a quiz. I don’t really do anything else, because there’s not much else I could do.
Do you think your future holds any branching out or are you going to carry on just as you are?
I’M coming up to the end of my BBC contract. Increasingly I’ve been wondering whether, because I’ve been on a rolling contract of 10 films each for three years at a go... so three years, 10 films... I’ve been trying to think about whether I should open it up a bit and try some different moods/moves.
The short answer is that I think I’ll always be someone who works on location in live situations. I’d never be on a shiny floor show.
I’d never do conventional entertainment. Not out of any sense of snobbery, it’s just I wouldn’t be any good at it. I get too nervous. I get all jittery.
So no unrequited dreams you’re desperate to fulfil?
I WOULD like to get back to doing some celebrity-type shows. As in profiling, finding a way of either reinventing ‘When Louis Met’, or finding some other different type of location filming.
Who would be your targets for celebrities?
WELL, we don’t think of them as targets. We think of them as subjects. If it was a dream list, it would probably be Tom Cruise. But you’d have to get full access to him in his Scientology mode.
What other channels do you admire in terms of documentary making? Would you be willing to go to any of them – Netflix, ITV, Channel 4...?
I REALLY feel very lucky to have worked at the BBC and I think that every conversation at work now seems to involve the word Netflix. And you know – like everyone – I watch Netflix.
I think Netflix could never really have incubated or allowed what I do in the sense that it allowed me to spend 20 years kind of getting it sometimes a bit wrong and sometimes right, and developing, with the team – the strategies, the techniques, the telling the stories.
I think we have something to be very grateful for in the UK having the BBC. And I feel happy there.
Louis Theroux’s Altered States is on BBC2 tomorrow at 9pm.