Top 10 Times Louis Theroux Called Out Liars

#10: Reds

While making a film in Philadelphia about its crime rate, Louis encounters a dealer known to the police named Reds, who seems to lie straight to his face. Reds is partially involved in a fight between two women, one of whom is a girlfriend of his, insisting to Louis that the fight was just over a personal dispute. Louis then grills Reds about whether he “owns the corner”, leading to more denials from him, as he insists that he doesn’t know anything about any local violence. It’s clear to everyone, including Louis, that he’s lying. Louis later reconvenes with him and asks outright if he’s ever shot anybody, which he also denies.

#9: The Boer Leader

In this old episode of “Weird Weekends”, Louis went to South Africa to talk to the leader of the Afrikaner nationalist movement, Eugène Terre’Blanche. Louis asks him about his plans for South Africa, and Terre’Blanche talks at length about how he’s planning to divide the country further along ethnic lines, leading a hate movement in the aftermath of apartheid. Louis then produces a list he’s made of ideal qualities in a Boer Man, and uses it to challenge Terre’Blanche about whether a Black South African could be a Boer if they had all of those qualities. He calls out Terre’Blanche’s racist views straight to his face, embarrassing him, though the organisation he founded still exists in South Africa to this day.

#8: Ross Jeffries

He was probably lying to himself as much as he was lying to Louis, when Louis visited him in California and learnt about Jeffries’ pick-up artistry first-hand. Jeffries immediately took Louis through his whiteboards covered in women’s names and “scripts” where he tries to come up with phrases that will lure people into bed with him, much to Louis’s scepticism. Later, Louis tests out Jeffries’ techniques, stopping women in the street to ask them to pick their favourite constellation from a picture book. Jeffries then encourages Louis, telling him he did well, despite how visibly uncomfortable they all are. He probably tells all his clients they’re doing well.

#7: Settlers

In 2025, Louis revisited the West Bank to talk to the Israeli settlers who were slowly moving deeper into the region, which has for years been regarded as against international law by the UN, the ICJ, and many more organisations. The settlers themselves, of course, don’t agree. In this disturbing scene, Louis calls out a woman who says she wants to deport Palestinians, who then moments later says that she actually doesn’t believe that – even though we JUST saw her says the opposite. She then pushes him to prove that violence is retaliatory, but her point falls flat because, obviously, Louis doesn’t retaliate at all.

#6: Inheritance

Louis headed to Las Vegas to learn about its world-famous casinos, and the people who gamble in them. One such woman, Martha, spends her retirement gambling all day every day, usually on the slot machines. He later visits her at home, where he meets her son, Seth. Louis wants to know how he feels about his mother losing $4 million in seven years, and suspects he’s not being completely honest. He learns that Seth has tried to convince Martha to stop gambling countless times, and it becomes clear that Seth is a lot more concerned than he lets on. Seth is one of many people who pretends that he’s fine with all the gambling because he’s lost too many arguments.

#5: Guy Grundy

In another episode of “Weird Weekends”, Louis shadows bodybuilder Guy Grundy and asks him outright about whether he’s ever taken performance enhancers. What follows is a masterclass in how to be the worst liar in the world, so much so that we can’t believe our eyes. Grundy talks entirely in hypotheticals of how much he would or wouldn’t take if he were interested in taking those kinds of things, and at one point calls out female bodybuilders for being even more prone to wanting pharmaceutical help than the men. Louis calls him out gently, by correcting him to keep his lie intact.

#4: The Quran

In his numerous films where he visits the Westboro Baptist Church, Louis spends a lot of time pointing out the flaws in their theological arguments. In this bizarre scene, they go for both of the other two biggest Abrahamic religions in one fell swoop: Islam and Judaism. They start with a discussion about burning a copy of the Quran and criticising Islam’s God; however, anyone with even a cursory knowledge of theology will remind you that the Abrahamic religions all technically worship the same deity. They then move on to Israel and say they’re going to Jerusalem to try to get all of its inhabitants to repent for executing Jesus – even though it was the Romans who did that.

#3: Myron Gaines

Following Theroux’s documentary about the Manosphere, Gaines went on a seven-hour tirade on a livestream attacking Louis for how he’d portrayed him – and to be fair, he didn’t come out of it looking particularly good. Gaines talked extensively about how it was his goal to have multiple wives and how the women would just have to accept it, even though his girlfriend Angie clearly disputed this next to him. Louis points out that Gaines has immediately backtracked, and he isn’t allowed to talk to any of the women in Gaines’ life for the rest of filming. Afterwards, it was revealed that Angie had dumped Myron, making the situation even more embarrassing for him.

#2: Max Clifford’s Sainsbury’s Sting

In a bizarre moment, Theroux follows PR man Max Clifford on his usual Sainsbury’s shopping trip, only to find that they’ve been beaten there by a handful of journalists. Louis was baffled that anybody would be that eager to get candid pictures of Clifford buying veg, and he was right to be, quizzing the journalists and learning that Clifford had tipped them off himself. Clifford is then caught out by his microphone, which was still recording. Louis confronts him with this, and Clifford continues to lie, saying that the journalist is there only to do a story on him, despite the recording. He takes the microphone off and ends the show then and there.

#1: Jimmy Savile

It’s a tragic state of affairs that Louis was, for whatever reason, unable to push harder against Jimmy Savile and his lies in his initial documentary in 2000. But he still did attempt to bring up the rumours about Savile’s behaviour, asking him outright and getting fed the same lies Savile fed to everyone else. He later revisited the subject after Savile’s death and the fallout of the scandal, talking to some of Savile’s victims, who said that they thought Louis had been tricked by Savile, a master manipulator. The scenes are as extraordinary as they are unsettling, but for all of Louis’s guilt afterwards, by asking him about the rumours on-camera he did more than a lot of people.

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