Louis Theroux has opened up on the ‘surreal’ moment one of his contributors demanded he got off his property while wearing a T-shirt with his face branded on.
The documentary-maker is returning to television screens with a new three-part BBC series titled Forbidden America in just a few weeks.
The episodes follow him as returns to the US to explore the impact of the internet and social media on some of the most controversial corners of American society.
In part one, titled Extreme And Online, Louis meets the young and highly inflammatory figures of the latest incarnation of the American far right, including Beardson Beardly, a gamer who is a self-described ‘online troll’.
Beardson wore a T-shirt with three pictures of Louis’s face on as they met for an interview in his garden, but things quickly turned ugly when Louis asked the contributor about an alleged Nazi salute.
‘I had seen him doing what appears to be a Hitler salute not once but twice at the AFPAC event (America First Political Action Conference) and then I find another picture that looks like a screengrab of him doing his Nazi salute,’ Louis recalled.
‘Anyway, when I saw him wearing the t-shirt, I was amused. I had heard him say on a stream, “Oh Louis Theroux is going to come and interview me, I’ve got a little trick up my sleeve, a little game, a little prank. Nothing too much but something slightly amusing.”
‘In my mind, I thought it could have been something a little more off-putting or weird, but it was just a T-shirt. The weird part was then being thrown out by someone who was wearing a T-shirt of me.’
Louis explained he got a sense of cognitive dissonance over the whole shebang, with Beardson telling him to ‘f*ck off’ and to ‘go spit on a d*ck!’
‘He’s obviously really upset and angry and the interview jumped the tracks really quickly just as I asked him about why he gave a Nazi salute,’ he reflected.
‘Suddenly I’m being thrown out by a guy wearing my T-shirt. It was surreal and a little bit sad in a way.’
Louis admitted he had been thrown out of anywhere between 10 to 15 interviews during his 24-years in filmmaking.
‘As a sensitive person, it never feels good,’ he said. ‘I don’t enjoy people who are visibly upset but at the same time, it is what it is, you realise it will make explosive and entertaining footage.’
Reflecting on his clash with Beardson, Louis wondered whether he’d left too quickly.
‘Maybe I should have said, “why don’t you make me?” because he was quite small. I’ve been doing a lot of Joe Wicks since the beginning of lockdown… he was a weeny little guy who spent his time on the computer gaming.
‘There aren’t many people of whom it could be said that I could comfortably handle in a physical altercation, but I think Beardson could be one of the few.’
Credit: Original article published here.You can read this post on My Celebrity Life.
Louis Theroux has opened up on the ‘surreal’ moment one of his contributors demanded he got off his property while wearing a T-shirt with his face branded on.
The documentary-maker is returning to television screens with a new three-part BBC series titled Forbidden America in just a few weeks.
The episodes follow him as returns to the US to explore the impact of the internet and social media on some of the most controversial corners of American society.
In part one, titled Extreme And Online, Louis meets the young and highly inflammatory figures of the latest incarnation of the American far right, including Beardson Beardly, a gamer who is a self-described ‘online troll’.
Beardson wore a T-shirt with three pictures of Louis’s face on as they met for an interview in his garden, but things quickly turned ugly when Louis asked the contributor about an alleged Nazi salute.
‘I had seen him doing what appears to be a Hitler salute not once but twice at the AFPAC event (America First Political Action Conference) and then I find another picture that looks like a screengrab of him doing his Nazi salute,’ Louis recalled.
‘Anyway, when I saw him wearing the t-shirt, I was amused. I had heard him say on a stream, “Oh Louis Theroux is going to come and interview me, I’ve got a little trick up my sleeve, a little game, a little prank. Nothing too much but something slightly amusing.”
‘In my mind, I thought it could have been something a little more off-putting or weird, but it was just a T-shirt. The weird part was then being thrown out by someone who was wearing a T-shirt of me.’
Louis explained he got a sense of cognitive dissonance over the whole shebang, with Beardson telling him to ‘f*ck off’ and to ‘go spit on a d*ck!’
‘He’s obviously really upset and angry and the interview jumped the tracks really quickly just as I asked him about why he gave a Nazi salute,’ he reflected.
‘Suddenly I’m being thrown out by a guy wearing my T-shirt. It was surreal and a little bit sad in a way.’
Louis admitted he had been thrown out of anywhere between 10 to 15 interviews during his 24-years in filmmaking.
‘As a sensitive person, it never feels good,’ he said. ‘I don’t enjoy people who are visibly upset but at the same time, it is what it is, you realise it will make explosive and entertaining footage.’
Reflecting on his clash with Beardson, Louis wondered whether he’d left too quickly.
‘Maybe I should have said, “why don’t you make me?” because he was quite small. I’ve been doing a lot of Joe Wicks since the beginning of lockdown… he was a weeny little guy who spent his time on the computer gaming.
‘There aren’t many people of whom it could be said that I could comfortably handle in a physical altercation, but I think Beardson could be one of the few.’
Credit: Original article published here.You can read this post on My Celebrity Life.