The Louis Theroux Podcast, launched on Spotify and additional platforms in 2023, takes after his anodyne 2022 BBC series Louis Theroux Interviews, in which he chatted to stars including Stormzy, Bear Grylls, Rita Ora and Raye – individuals who are all fine at what they do, and occasionally interesting, but devoid of the anarchic mystery of, say, Max Clifford or Chris Eubank, oddball cultural figures whom Theroux famously interviewed in the early Noughties.
Shows in which celebrities interview celebrities are a dime a dozen right now, and Theroux’s hasn’t even got a central hook along the lines of Kathy Burke’s Where There’s a Will, There’s a Wake (in which stars talk about their fantasy funerals), or Ed Gamble and James Acaster’s Off Menu (in which stars discuss their favourite meals).
Podcasts were ruining Louis Theroux – then along came Armie Hammer The broadcaster has spent the last few years engaging in unusually tepid conversations with celebrities on the BBC and on his Spotify podcast.
Theroux pushes him not only on the leaked text messages that suggested an erotic interest in consuming human flesh (a provocative joke, Hammer insists), but also the allegations of rape and sexual assault (consensual acts of non-consent, says Hammer) that engulfed the actor in 2021, effectively shuttering his movie career in the process.
After rising to prominence with the sly, gawping docuseries Weird Weekends, Theroux made his bread and butter the discreetly probing documentary – nerdily umming and ahhing his way into often quite ghoulish truths, whether it involved living with the hate group known as the Westboro Baptist Church, or breaking bread with Jimmy Savile.
