Louis Theroux confession: Netflix star's pride over 'goading Nazi' exposed
LOUIS THEROUX admitted to feeling mixed emotions over one of his most popular documentaries where "goading a Nazi" led the subject to an antisemitic rant, during a BBC interview.
Louis Theroux reveals he once 'goaded a Nazi'
Louis Theroux’s documentaries are among a number of shows that have spiked in popularity during the coronavirus lockdown, as the public settle in for large TV binges. The journalist’s investigations have seen him talk to groups considered to be on the fringes of society, including Scientologists, Doomsday preppers and exotic animal keepers, including ‘Tiger King’ star Joe Exotic. One of his most prominent programmes ‘Louis and The Nazis’ led him to travel to California to visit the White Aryan Resistance, which initially aired on the BBC in 2003. But the star admitted while reviewing the film reels for the show, which now features on Netflix, he felt that he might have been guilty of igniting tensions during one of the most controversial scenes.
Louis Theroux confessed to feeling that he had “goaded” one of the subjects of his documentary series, when asked if he regretted how the shows turned out.
The journalist admitted his memory of events became blurred due to the “reviewing, tweaking and reviewing” for the finished product – in reality they actually “play out quite differently”.
During the BBC podcast ‘Grounded with Louis Theroux’ in April, he recalled an encounter with a man named Skip during ‘Louis and the Nazis’.
He made a decision before the project began not to disclose whether he was Jewish as a way to “create helpful friction” and as a “principled stand”.
But on the last day of filming, tensions rose when “the skinheads got drunk” and Skip began to confront him about his religious beliefs before he launched into an offensive outburst.
Louis said: “He began grilling me and saying ‘Are you a Jew? You’ve been in my house exposing me. Expose yourself! You look kind of greasy, you look kind of Jewish. Are you a Jew?’
“By this point, I thought I sort of already made my stand and it would look weak to back down – but when I looked at the rushes it turned out I sort of goaded Skip a bit.
“There’s a moment where I say, ‘Skip, look, here we are sitting in your backyard having a nice time relaxing, having a drink, some burgers, I might be Jewish, I might not be but what’s so wrong about this?’”
JUST IN: Lenny Henry’s heartbreak over ‘Black and White Minstrel Show’ revealed
Related articles
Louis stated that he had “totally forgotten” that he “seeded” the lead-up to that outburst with comments and debated whether or not he felt guilty about that decision.
After deliberation, he concluded: “I felt quite pleased with it.
“My biggest fear is that I have no art, that I stumble around and film for long enough and grab them moments but there’s no real art.
“I worry that I’m given too much credit and that there are a million people who could do my job so when I saw that I thought, ‘I do, do something’, I did actually kind of make that moment happen.”
