THIS SERIES COVERS POLYAMORY, ADOPTION AND ASSISTED DYING. WHY DID YOU WANT TO COVER THESE TOPICS?
Altered States was an attempt to take a look at the most intimate and most difficult sides of life [birth, love and death], in an American context, and specifically ways in which increasingly these issues are being handled differently. Full disclosure – the series was incubated over a few months and slightly on the fly – we didn't sit down and think, "We're going to do a three-parter called Altered States". It kind of evolved.
WHY COVER THESE TOPICS?
I was interested in the difficulty of mothers of newborns handing over their babies for adoption. And then, around the same time we began talking about the way in which dying is changing in America and specifically that people with terminal illnesses in certain states can now opt to be prescribed life-ending medication. And then, finally, polyamory came up as a subject and we noticed that all of these, in different ways, were attempts to deal with age-old situations in a new way.
HOW DID YOU FIND PEOPLE'S WILLINGNESS TO DISCUSS THESE THINGS?
As ever, there's an issue around anything that's massively stressful and intimate. Although perhaps it's easier in America than in the UK, where I guess people have fewer hang-ups about putting things out in a public sphere. I was aware, especially with the film which we're calling Choosing Death, in which we follow three families – well, there's two families really, and one woman, whose husband has died – who are approaching this decision of wishing to end their lives due to either pain and suffering or terminal illness. And I don' t think I've ever been been quite so anxious about whether we would get the contributors, going into it.
WHAT IS IT ABOUT YOU THAT YOU THINK MAKES PEOPLE OPEN UP TO YOU?
As much as I'd like to take credit, I think the advance work that's been done by the team is absolutely critical. The team that goes (there) in advance of me are sort of the ambassadors for the project. They do a wonderful job of finding people and sort of assuring them. For my own part, I just try and be a decent person. I think having glasses and being a bit of a geek probably doesn't hurt. I think I'm naturally quite a tentative and insecure person, and paradoxically I think sometimes that has its advantages. I think people can see me maybe as someone who actually isn't going to be a bully, and who is basically trying very hard to read the signals that are coming back, and not be a d**k.
ANY UNREQUITED DREAMS YOU'RE DESPERATE TO FULFIL?
I would like to get back to doing some celebrity-type shows. As in profiling, finding a way of either reinventing the When Louis Met's, or finding some other different type of location filming.
WHO WOULD BE YOUR TARGETS FOR CELEBRITIES?
Well, we don't think of them as targets. We think of them as subjects. If it was a dream list, it would probably be Tom Cruise. But you'd have to get full access to him in his Scientology mode.
:: Louis Theroux's Altered States is on BBC Two at 9pm, from Sunday November 4.