Louis Theroux
On his toughest subject yet – his own marriage
The problem with working in television is that it’s too much fun, with the result that it makes relationships unstable. The ones left behind to do childcare and cope with tantrums and keep on top of laundry can’t help resenting their other-halves off filming in far-flung locations, with buffet breakfasts and heated swimming pools.
Nancy was a producer in the BBC history department: film-star beautiful, with the high cheekbones and sad eyes of a French chanteuse, but she wore it lightly, as though her beauty was something she had never noticed about herself. I admired her as she passed me in corridors on endless outings to smoke cigarettes.
We first spoke at a BBC Christmas party. I was wearing a blue party wig and my opening line was: “Oh yeah, I’ve seen you around.” Later, she would impersonate it in a voice of gormless, obviously feigned disinterest.
In late 2003, Nancy moved in. As time went on, and our commitments multiplied – Albert arrived on Valentine’s Day 2006; our second son, Fred, arrived in 2008; and much later, in 2014, Walter, after two pregnancies that ended in miscarriage – she made it clear she had an issue with me going away as much as I did.
More than once she said, a little ruefully: “I always promised myself I wouldn’t get involved with someone in TV. I’ve seen it fail too many times. Husbands and wives spending too long apart. Directors having affairs with their producers… It never works.”
Like many couples, we fell into familiar patterns in our arguing. They were like songs – duets – without the music. Many centred on the idea that, unlike her, I had made no real concessions to family life. I was still going away, still doing the same job, as if nothing had changed.
“I’ve sacrificed my career and changed my life,” she would say, “but you’ve given up nothing. You’ve had everything your way. Name one thing you’ve given up.”
“Not true. I leave work early. I’m never back after six. I’m usually the first one to leave the office.”
“Your workmates don’t have kids, Louis. You do.”
“I’ve made lots of compromises.” “Name one!”
In the background to these arguments were certain phrases that I discovered, to my cost, I wasn’t supposed to say. But inevitably I would say them, because – to my mind – they were selfevidently true and important. One was: “But this is what I do, Nancy.”
There were other variations of this that were equally inflammatory. “I was doing this when we met.” “You knew what you were getting into.” And so on. They never failed to increase the tensions.
“What was I doing when we met? I was making programmes, too. I wasn’t sweeping up bits of rice from under the table. ‘This is what I do.’ Change what you do! Do something else. It’s not part of who you are.”
Another phrase was: “Why don’t we get more help?”
“Get help? So you can not be a dad? It’s not about ‘help’, Louis. It’s about you being a father to your children.”
Before I went away for work, I would make batches of kedgeree and bolognese and spoon them into little Tupperware tubs for freezing; sometimes, on location, I would do an online Sainsbury’s shop.
When I flew back – more often than not, on an overnight economy flight, landing exhausted and jetlagged – I’d be aware of the need to hit the ground running. I’d walk in with my bags, feeling like a zombie. Nancy would be tired and resentful. She’d have got into her own routines while I was away. I was an interloper and an encumbrance.
“You seem grumpy,” she’d say. “Aren’t you happy to be home?”
“No, I am happy, I’m just tired.” The voice in my head would be saying, can’t I have a lie down? “I might have a little lie down. I’m just so tired.”
“I’ve been looking after a baby and a toddler on my own for two weeks! But you’re the one that’s tired. OK, sure!”
“It’s jet-lag. It’s different.”
“You just have no idea, do you? I make everything so easy for you. You have it all your way. You get to carry on doing what you do. I haven’t had a night away from my kids in three years. You’ve never even done a weekend on your own with the kids!”
In certain respects, we communicated better when I was away. With the imposed calm of distance and the interface of the written word, she would express her frustrations at the life she found herself backed into.
“I’m really lonely, Louis.” “I feel I’m basically being a single parent.” “I’m in half a relationship.”
For my part, I toggled between viewing myself as being unfairly victimised and put upon for making a living and – on the other hand – seeing Nancy’s side and wanting to do my best to support her and not wanting to be the stereotype of the guy whose wife is angry with him all the time. As was so often the case, my brain was a parliament of fractious voices.
Making it all the more complicated was a weird kind of ambivalence about myself. In the spirit of Groucho Marx, I had never been completely OK with the idea of someone being in love with me. It seemed a character flaw in them. In turn this led me, ever so slightly, to undervalue Nancy for being with me.
I liked to think my resistance to being married was part of a bohemian attitude to do with the fatuity of weddings, their role as platforms for materialism and showing off, as bourgeois status showdowns. But if I’m honest with myself, I also see a deliberate withholding, a misjudged sense that it might keep Nancy on her toes and possibly also, in a spirit related to my attitude to contracts, that it gave you some leverage if you didn’t sign anything, that it wasn’t all quite official, and you could walk off the job if it wasn’t working out.
None of this was clear or consistent in my own mind. I loved Nancy. I loved my family. I wanted everything to work out. But I was – and continue to be – a confused person in many important respects.
I told myself I believed the best way to honour our relationship was for us to love one another and make it last, and that I viewed the idea of a public statement of intent, like a wedding, as attention-seeking and phoney. But undoubtedly amidst those inclinations was an inability to commit – certainly, that was what Nancy felt – and it was only when I came face to face with the real risk of losing her that I realised what a calamity that would be.
In the spring of 2010, I turned 40. We’d invited the wider family – uncles, aunts, in-laws – around to our house for a big lunch. It was hot. Nancy had gone into her getting-tensebecause-guests-arecoming mode. Have you peeled the carrots? I thought I told you to get the houmous that has caramelised onions in it? “I’m just doing the chairs…” I began feeling put upon. I was three or four chairs in, the sun was beating down, and I began wondering whose idea this party had been. Had I actually wanted a family party for my fortieth birthday? Had Nancy asked me or had she just decided that was what we were doing?
In the subsequent days and weeks, I didn’t think much more of the argument that followed; I shouted and she left, the partygoers arrived and she returned. But much later, Nancy told me that was the moment she detached. I should have known something was up when Nancy was complaining less than usual about my going away. For some reason, she was surprisingly relaxed about the two two-week trips to Israel to film in the Occupied Territories. Then the real warning sign, which completely went over my head, was her saying: “You know, if you ever want to pursue an outside physical relationship, I would be OK with that.”
I thought: “Well, that’s nice.” Needless to say, I didn’t do anything about it. The rapprochement
‘You know, if you ever want to pursue an outside physical relationship, I’d be OK with that’