EXCLUSIVE: A year on from Adolescence hitting screens worldwide, Louis Theroux‘s investigation of the manosphere is coming to Netflix.
Theroux’s Mindhouse Productions has made a 90-minute feature doc fronted by the celebrated UK documentarian. Mindhouse bosses Nancy Strang and Arron Fellows also revealed a Channel 4 doc with financial trader-turned campaigner Gary Stevenson, and a podcast division to “cut through the undergrowth of the [TV] commissioning process.”
Netflix’s Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere, which drops March 11, sees Theroux head to some dark and difficult places to examine a world inhabited by the likes of Andrew Tate. He speaks to the likes of Harrison Sullivan (AKA HS Tikky Tokky), Myron Gaines, Nicolas Kenn De Balinthazy (AKA Sneako), Justin Waller and Ed Matthews, people who are reshaping young men’s ideas about masculinity and fuelling a resurgent global men’s rights movement.
Details of the show leaked last year and it was described as something of an Adolescence spin-off but Theroux told us exclusively his team started filming before Adolescence was even released.
“It’s sort of nothing like Adolescence but it’s in the precinct of what the boy in Adolescence might have been watching,” he said. “I guess Adolescence was a proof of concept, but I don’t ever think we needed a proof of concept. We knew it was a hot subject.”
Theroux detailed the strange sensation of filming Inside the Manosphere and seeing himself appear on the social media timelines of his subjects. “I knew they would be streaming or filming me and would put that content out,” he added. “And I hoped we’d get this feedback loop where there was a meta narrative that was then affecting my approach to the story. Sometimes it was kind of embarrassing. I’d arrive back from filming trips and my kids would say, ‘Dad what you were doing? You got owned.’ That’s a little bit painful but actually makes for a stronger film.”
Inside the Manosphere is Mindhouse’s first Netflix feature since cyberstalker doc Can I Tell You A Secret? and is the first of several Mindhouse shows arriving in the coming months, with the team also revealing to Deadline a Channel 4 state-of-the-nation feature fronted by Stevenson, a former financial trader who has pivoted to becoming an activist against economic inequality and wrote a bestselling memoir, The Trading Game.
Podcast studio “cuts through the undergrowth”
Strang said Mindhouse has hit a healthy streak of balancing “state of the nation stuff in the UK and bigger plays in America.”
Meanwhile, Mindhouse is launching a podcast and digital studio. Theroux said Mindhouse Studios will “cut through some of the undergrowth of the commissioning process and the staffing process” when it comes to getting stories on screen as quickly as possible.
Theroux said launching his own podcast in lockdown was a “lightbulb moment for me to see how it connected with people and how these programs can connect with people, have a big reach and be fun to make.”
Mindhouse also produces Rylan Clark’s podcast and the team wants to formalize its approach to making pods and think about opportunities in the digital landscape, which could involve making documentaries for digital platforms rather than having to go through the traditional commissioning process. Theroux, Strang and Fellows will effectively oversee Mindhouse Studios, while producers Millie Chu and Francesca Bassett have been given senior roles.
Now into its sixth season, Theroux has interviewed the likes of Ed Sheeran, Florence Pugh and Sean Penn on his pod. He used the latter interview as an example of why Mindhouse Studios can work so well.
“When I saw Sean Penn up in the Hollywood hills it would have made an amazing Louis Interviews… on BBC Two but it would have taken two days to film, and involved quite a big production, and six weeks in the edit,” he added. “That wasn’t what Sean signed up for. Big stars like Sean will give you a couple of hours. I sometimes joke on the podcast that it’s not a podcast, it’s a s**t TV show. I don’t know if that’s advised but if by s**t you mean it’s not conventionally shot and I stumble over my words a bit then it is kind of a s**t TV show.”
“Proud of how we handled” Bobby Vylan
One recent Theroux podcast generated headlines for what some may deem the wrong reasons. British Airways pulled sponsorship after Theroux interviewed the frontman of controversial hip-hop duo Bob Vylan, who had been widely condemned at Glastonbury for chanting “death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]” and making remarks about working for “f***ing Zionists.”
The incident almost cost BBC Director General Tim Davie his job. Addressing the interview and its criticism and fallout for the first time, Theroux told us it was “painful to lose a sponsor,” but he was resolute in his defense of the interview, in which frontman Bobby Vylan said he would do the chant again if he had the chance and had been hailed by BBC staffers for his behavior (the BBC declined comment at the time on the latter point).
“That’s what I do,” Theroux said. “That’s my unique place in the British broadcasting landscape. I’m willing to have difficult conversations and long may it continue.”
He added: “The interview went out a couple of days after Manchester [a terrorist incident that saw Jewish people attacked and killed outside of a synagogue on the holy day of Yom Kippur], and there’s a lot of fear that’s real, and I want to acknowledge that. At the same time I’m very proud of how we handled the interview and how we did it. But I don’t want to minimize the feelings that are going on.”
Last year, Theroux made hard-hitting BBC doc The Settlers, in which he returned to the West Bank to profile illegal Israeli settlers at a time of extremely heightened tensions in the region.
Strang said the doc proves the BBC is happy to take risks, and that this appetite hasn’t been dented by the $10B Donald Trump lawsuit that did in the end do for the Director General. It is, however, the pace of TV commissioning and the difficulty of financing documentaries that has been holding back the sorts of story Mindhouse is trying to tell.
Fellows added: “We often make quite sensitive documentaries where access is difficult or sensitive. Ultimately, because platforms and broadcasters want [access] sewn up before you go into that initial production process, you’re having to keep relationships going for a hell of a long time with people who don’t know the industry and you need to keep on board for six months to a year before things actually go into production. That can be really difficult.”
Nevertheless, Strang said Mindhouse’s “breadth” of content upcoming is where the indie wants to be. It even introduced its first feature at Sundance, Hanging By A Wire, about a school commute in Pakistan that turned into a nightmare when a cable car’s wire snapped.
“It’s been a positive last 12 months,” said Strang. “There are challenges, less opportunities and budgets are tighter in lots of places, so it’s not necessarilly been easy, but we are lucky to have been busy.”
English (US) ·