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" The thing is, I have never been that confident, and, um, I have a lot of self-doubt, and I had never - I don't think I ever would have consciously chosen to be a television presenter. "

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" I don't like that feeling of holding back difficult questions. I feel like the more I can be transparent in the way I approach a story, the more it makes a satisfying programme. "

Louis Theroux

Questions

Story

Back

" Prisons and jails, I tend to feel that you're actually safer as a journalist than you might think, certainly more than it appears. "

" We have a double agenda of trying to deliver something exciting that people will talk about and will brighten their day and will amaze people and make us proud to have created an object of beauty. And on the other hand being true to the story. "

" When interviews are too cosy, I don't enjoy them. "

" I think people are so immersed in the anti-Scientology mindset by consuming tabloid media and stories about space aliens. It's baffling. When I say I want to see a more positive side of the church, all I'm saying is I want to get past these headlines that talk about aliens and Tom Cruise jumping on a sofa. "

" Most people feel that they are the heroes of their own lives and that they're good people. So if they're in a crisis, they feel an understandable urge to set out their own version of events. "

" I didn't think, 'I'd really like to work in TV; maybe I could carve out a niche where I talk to people who are somehow involved in marginal or difficult lifestyles... ' It was something I gravitated to very naturally as a subject area, almost instinctively, and somehow turned into a TV career without meaning to. "

" I tell people I live in Harlesden in north-west London, and I can see them thinking, 'Why do you live there?' "

" I don't think I'm afraid of anything. "

" Sometimes I feel a bit socially disconnected in terms of being a little bit gullible about how people interrelate emotionally. "

" I've discovered I am quite a puritanical person. "

Louis Theroux

Person

Quite

" All religions are, in some basic sense, irrational. "

" I am genuinely slightly vague and chaotic in my habits. For good or ill, you know. "

" Reflecting the truth sounds easy, but sometimes it's not. "

" I'm not that comfortable doing polemic or being strident. "

" People say I'm deceptively unassuming, but that's the way I go through life. I'm not flash. You can make it sound calculated, but it's pretty much just me. "

Louis Theroux

Say

People

" You can say, 'I am a poet, rock-climbing shaman, and my name is Hiawatha Moonbeam,' and people in America will say, 'Hey, that's great. All power to you, man'. "

" There's always a negotiation that goes on to persuade people we are coming to the subject with an open mind but without surrendering too many pawns. We don't want to misrepresent the fact that we will draw our own conclusions. "

" Funnily enough, the most danger I felt was when I did a story about exotic animals kept as pets in America. "

" I never want to feel more than the viewers. I'm not trying to be an automaton. It's like when you see people laughing on camera, and you don't find it funny as a viewer - it's an offputting experience. "

" In my normal way of doing things, there's a little bit of 'going native' that takes place, where you're in a world long enough, you can't really help but start to see things in a nuanced, more humanistic way. Just because you're with people and you start to, in general, slightly like the people you're with. "

" I'm not necessarily scanning for clues when I make documentaries. "

" I sometimes get accused of being 'faux-naive,' but for me, it's really just about getting down to the basics of something. "

Louis Theroux

Basics

Down

" I think there's a feeling of - a grassroots feeling of being betrayed by the elites in some way: that the system is working for itself and not for the people at the bottom. "

" When you don't have access to a subject, and all you have is ex-members and critics, there is this gravitational pull toward telling a certain version of events. Scientology would say this, and they have a point, that it's like doing a portrait of a marriage in which you're only hearing from the ex-wife and not the ex-husband. "

" I don't like watching things where I think the people onscreen are ahead of me or assuming I know something that I don't know. "

" I would love to make a film in the outback or in Papua New Guinea, in Port Moresby. I know that it's not in Australia, but it's not too far. "

" I never misrepresent my position - you've got to be strong enough to make the argument and marshal the case. "

" As much as the glasses, it's the Englishness and the gangliness. The apparent lack of muscularity... they indicate I'm not a macho man. "

" I try not to be too judgmental. "