Louis Theroux Interview: How to Become a Gen Z TikTok Icon

Louis Theroux entered the British consciousness at the turn of the century as a nerdy documentarian who conducted awkward interviews with minor celebrities and quirky characters. In his early years, Theroux associated with UFO hunters, far-right Americans, televangelists, rappers, porn stars, conspiracy theorists, and swingers; he asked Anne Widdecombe if she was a virgin; he stayed at Jimmy Savile’s house before confronting him about rumors that he was a pedophile.

These documentaries seem dated today. Theroux has clear charisma and is charming as a presenter. But it would not be surprising if these early series, Weird weekends and When Louis met…, had proved his prime. Instead, it is now perhaps more relevant to British culture than ever before.

In 2022, the BBC launched two Theroux series. In the first, he revisited some of the fringe groups that helped make his name – adding a contemporary twist to each episode. in Louis Theroux’s Forbidden America, he showed how the far right in American politics spread online; he highlighted the #MeToo scandal in the pornography industry; and he investigates crime in Florida’s rap community. Theroux’s latest series, Louis Theroux interviews…, features in-depth interviews with bona fide A-listers including Stormzy, Judi Dench and Kathryn Ryan. To top it all off, 2022 was also the year Theroux became an unlikely TikTok sensation. The 52-year-old “went viral” after an old documentary clip of him rapping the words “my money don’t wobble, wobble, they fold” was shared widely by Gen Z users.

For me, Theroux’s growing importance was brought about by Stormzy, the 29-year-old grime artist who appeared on the first episode of Louis Theroux interviews… this winter. “I’ve wanted to meet you for so long,” Stormzy blurted out as Theroux entered his dressing room. Stormzy, in the middle of a stadium tour and preparing to perform in front of 16,000 fans on the night he met Theroux in Glasgow, looked genuinely star-struck. When I interviewed Theroux via Zoom to talk about his new series, I asked him if he believed Stormzy was trying to flatter him or if he really was as big a fan as he made himself out to be. “Oh,” Theroux replied, sounding slightly annoyed by the question. “Okay. I hope so. I have no reason to believe otherwise. He’s definitely watched a lot of my old shows.

Theroux said his interview with Stormzy came after he was approached by representatives of the musician. Stormzy later invited Theroux to appear in one of his music videos. Theroux said he became aware of Stormzy’s interest in him in 2017 when the rapper was photographed wearing a Louis Theroux T-shirt. “I thought, this is extraordinary!” he said. “And then another part of me is like, ‘Sure. Why isn’t everyone wearing a Louis Theroux t-shirt? That kind of grandiosity seeps in.” But he later lamented that some of his “cheeky” humor doesn’t always translate over video calls. “It’s hard with Zoom,” he said. “Irony sometimes doesn’t make the jump.”

[See also: Piers Morgan: “The TalkTV ratings ate at my soul like a flesh-eating bug”]

Theroux was raised in London by an English mother and an American father, Paul Theroux, the travel writer and novelist. His brother Marcel is a writer and broadcaster and his cousin Justin is a Hollywood actor and director. Theroux attended Westminster School at the same time as Nick Clegg and Helena Bonham Carter before reading modern history at Magdalen College, Oxford. After graduating, he moved to the US. He began his career at local newspapers in San Jose, California, and later moved to New York, where he made his first break in television as a correspondent for TV Nationsatirical news program hosted by director Michael Moore.

From there, Theroux caught the attention of the BBC, who commissioned it Weird weekends, When Louis met… and then documentaries about neo-Nazis, pedophiles, crystal meth, Scientology and dementia. For many, Theroux became best known for his documentary on Jimmy Savile, released in 2000 after the former BBC presenter was later exposed as a pedophile following his death in 2011. Some critics argued that Theroux could have more to expose Saville. Theroux, for his part, believes he has done more to challenge Saville than any other journalist.

Theroux has built a cult following in recent years. In addition to T-shirts and other memorabilia, some mega-fans boast that they have Louis Theroux tattoos. However, nothing could have prepared him for the influx of attention after his ‘jiggle jiggle’ rap was picked up by TikTok’s mysterious algorithms. Theroux told me he had been inundated with messages from “old friends – people from LA and New York and Boston or around the UK – saying, ‘Oh my God, my son or my daughter or my wife on her course on rotation listening to your raps endlessly!’ And on New York Times covered it and placed it on the cover. Which for me, as a reader of New York Times going back 20 years, it was kind of an anointing. This was the apotheosis of my media profile. I enjoyed. I just tried not to take it too seriously because in the end it was a whim of the algorithm.”

Theroux and his wife, Nancy, have three sons, two in their teens. Not everyone, he told me, is excited to see their dad become a TikTok star. “I think part of a dad’s job is to be a bit of a no-brainer, to sort of accept that your role is to make them cringe – and it turns out I’m pretty good at that,” he said. “My 16-year-old self was fine with it. He said, “Oh, it’s going viral. Anyway. Who cares.’ My seven-year-old was really excited and, I think, would brag about it, and learn to rap and do it right away. And the 14-year-old, I think, looked at it with great disdain and took the view that I had actually done something very stupid in the middle of his favorite platform. Theroux said all is forgiven now and that his sons are doing “surprisingly well” with his appearance in a Stormzy music video.

Family issues aside, I suspect there must be some downsides to becoming a TikTok celebrity. I asked Theroux if he worries that his 15 minutes of fame on TikTok have overshadowed the rest of his career. “Well, there is a factual sense in which that is true,” he said. “There are a lot of people, maybe tens of millions of people, who know this rap and haven’t seen it When Lewis met… Hamilton and I have no idea I’m a British documentary presenter and journalist. And that’s good.” Theroux said his TikTok account has given younger people an “inlet” to his documentary work, and that he’s found the experience to be 99.9-100 percent positive.

If anything, he said, it made the experience of being interviewed by journalists like me a little more pleasant. I asked Theroux if he, the interviewer, liked to play the part of the interviewee. “I don’t like it,” he said. “You can probably tell from my voice that I’m a little sick. But I woke up this morning—I’ve got a few hours of interviews, I’m going to do them on Zoom—and I thought, well, this should be good. I had no sense of dread about it.

And he added: “Talking to people like you – intelligent conversationalists, if I may describe you that way – people who are sensitive viewers – that’s good. I’m curious too. The feeling is like having a finger in the wind. Two years ago, three years ago, it would have been Jimmy Savile questions. And now these are questions about “my money doesn’t jingle, it jingles.” So that sounds like an improvement.”

[See also: Gary Lineker: “The BBC can’t stop me talking about politics”]