he BBC has just announced the six celebrities who will star in the second season of its Louis Theroux Interviews… series.
This year the docuseries will see Theroux travel from New York to France, and from Glastonbury to Kent, to spend time with boxer Anthony Joshua, actor Ashley Walters, activist Chelsea Manning, Hollywood legend Dame Joan Collins, musician Pete Doherty and singer-songwriter Raye.
“Working with the team on these six new programmes has been an enormous pleasure,” said Theroux. “The six guests are all distinctive and brilliant in different ways, all of them people who have endured setbacks and huge successes, and who have something to share with the world based on their journeys through life.”
As with the first series, Theroux will sit down with guests but also engage with elements of their life – whether that be seeing them perform live, seeing where they live, or meeting their family members.
“I am delighted that Louis is back with such an exciting and eclectic mix of new interviewees,” said the BBC’s head of documentary commissioning, Clare Sillery. “Louis’s genuine curiosity and warmth mean that each of these meetings will bring us something very new and different and I can’t wait to see him take us deeper into the worlds of these hugely engaging cultural figures.”
Series one saw Theroux interview major stars including Stormzy and Dame Judi Dench. The show was a huge success with an average audience of 2.1 million people watching the episodes in the week following their release.
The award-winning journalist’s upcoming series, which doesn’t yet have a release date, promises once again to offer a window into the lives of some of popular culture’s most fascinating figures.
Anthony Joshua
Theroux joins the two-time world heavyweight champion at his local boxing gym in North London. The interview takes place in the run up to Joshua’s major O2 Arena fight against 29-year-old American boxer Jermaine Franklin.
Ashley Walters
Ashley Walters attends ES Magazine X Paco Rabanne LFW Party on September 15, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images for EVENING STANDARD STYLE X PACO RABANNE)
/ Dave Benett/Getty Images for EVETheroux travels to the north Kent seaside town Herne Bay to meet actor and rapper Walters, who has recently starred in the final season of Netflix’s Top Boy. The duo discuss Walters’ Peckham upbringing, his family life and his acting success.
Chelsea Manning
Whistleblower Chelsea Manning remains one of America’s most divisive figures. Theroux meets the activist, whose 35-year prison sentence for leaking classified information to WikiLeaks was commuted by Obama in 2017, in New York City. Since her release, Manning has worked as a visiting fellow at Harvard University, tried to run for the U.S. Senate in Maryland and released a memoir. She now works as a public speaker and DJ.
Joan Collins
Theroux then travels to meet 90-year-old actor and author Dame Joan Collins in her French Riviera holiday home. The two icons discuss some of the most astonishing moments from her seven-decade career, and then go out on the town with Collins’ fifth husband, Percy Gibson.
Pete Doherty
Theroux travels to Normany to meet Pete Doherty, the Libertines and Babyshambles frontman whose quiet life in the French seaside region couldn’t be more different from his once rock’n’roll London existence. They discuss music, drugs and the future and then Theroux joins the Libertines on tour.
Raye
Tooting-born singer-songwriter Raye has had a big year: she won an Ivor Novello Award in 2023 for her song Escapism with 070 Shake, and was shortlisted for a 2023 Album of the Year Mercury Prize. Theroux meets the 25-year-old artist in South London, before watching her major performance on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage.
Louis Therous Interviews… season two, which doesn’t yet have a release date, will return to BBC Two and BBC iPlayer