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1. Michaela Coel once spoke in tongues

Our minds are so powerful that I really believed.

Michaela Coel

The I May Destroy You creator is the series’ first guest. She tells Louis about her complex relationship with Christianity (she is no longer a Christian) and remembers the time she spoke in tongues. “We would do prayer in the park and spoke in tongues,” she says. She tells him she’s not sure where it came from or what she thinks about it, but she fully believed it at the time. “Our minds are so powerful that I really believed. Who is to say what any of that means… I was 100% in the zone. Sometimes it really freaks me out that [I did that]… It just sounds like vowels and consonants strung together.”

Listen to the interview with Michaela Coel

2. Sia finds a lot of her own music “turdy”

Sia is a global music megastar. She’s had loads of hits. She’s enormously respected. And she thinks much of her own music is quite bad. She says, “I have to dumb it down to a degree, or make it broader and less specific, because then it can appeal to more people. They can project their sh*t onto it more easily. Don’t be specific because that alienates 70% of the world.” She thinks her frequent collaborator David Guetta (Titanium, Flames, Let’s Love) is a magician who can turn terrible music into gold. “Whatever we do, no matter how turdy it is, it is successful.”

Listen to the interview with Sia

3. Louis may have been responsible for Rylan’s sexual awakening

In the third episode Louis asks TV presenter Rylan Clark-Neal about the formative moments in his life, specifically the first time he thought about sex. Rylan reveals that Louis was involved. He brings up the episode of Louis Theroux: Life on the Edge in which Louis explores the world of gay porn. “I remember putting it on with the volume down, then turning it off because I was scared my mum was going to walk in,” Rylan says. “Louis Theroux made me gay. There’s your headline.”

Listen to the interview with Rylan Clark-Neal

4. Louis’s face made Ruby Wax want to vomit

Ruby Wax and Louis have covered similar ground, with documentaries about unusual people and memorable interviews with extremely eccentric famous people. In a very frank conversation, Ruby admits that part of her resents Louis, because she feels like he’s replaced her. Seeing his face even put her off lunch. “Somebody was wearing a t-shirt with your face on it recently and I couldn’t eat,” she says. “I was in a restaurant and the guy had ‘I love Louis Theroux’ and I literally choked on my sandwich.”

Listen to the interview with Ruby Wax

5. Leah Remini was yelled at by Tom Cruise

Leah Remini is one of the few celebrities who has left the Church of Scientology and spoken about it. In a fascinating chat, she tells Louis she was part of a core group of celebrity Scientologists, led by Tom Cruise. Leah remembers a time Tom gathered the group “and basically yelled at us and told us we’re not doing enough.” She says she was asked why she wasn’t bringing other celebrities into the church, including her King of Queens co-star Kevin James. She also says she took Jennifer Lopez to Tom’s wedding and caused great upset by asking if they could sit together: “It didn’t ruin anything, but I was severely punished for that.”

Listen to the interview with Leah Remini

6. Riz Ahmed originally turned down Four Lions

Riz Ahmed’s impressive movie career was kicked off with Four Lions, Chris Morris’s 2010 film about a group of bumbling wannabe terrorists. It was a big hit and made Riz famous, but originally, he declined to appear in it. Riz and Chris first met after Chris saw one of Riz’s music videos. They became friends. “I didn’t know [Chris’s] work or what a legend he was,” says Riz. When Chris started working on Four Lions, he asked Riz to play the lead, “I said, ‘No thank you, I don’t want to do it’. I was eager to play characters that weren’t shackled to the post-9/11 narrative... [I said], ‘I don’t want to play a terrorist, but I love you, man.’” He was eventually persuaded.

Listen to the interview with Riz Ahmed

7. FKA twigs has some unexpected influences

FKA twigs

Musician FKA twigs gets into a retro music chat with Louis and reveals some surprising influences. She’s a huge fan of Shakespeares Sister, who she calls, “Amaaaazing.” She’s delighted when Louis tells her that Siobhan Fahey from the group used to be in Bananarama: “That makes me like her more. That’s sick.” She also reveals that she was so into Adam Ant that she once accosted him in the street. “[When I was 18], I ran up to him on Old Compton Street and I gave him a hug and I wouldn’t let him go. I would hate it if someone did that to me.”

Listen to the interview with FKA twigs

8. Frankie Boyle wrote his autobiography on ecstasy

Comedian Frankie Boyle had a difficult childhood. When it came to writing his 2009 autobiography, My Sh*t Life So Far, he says he wasn’t sure how stories of growing up in near poverty and a teenage drinking problem would fit “the jaunty autobiography of a panel show contestant. I got a hotel in Edinburgh and basically took ecstasy to write the first draft of that book, to try to find some kind of spark or something that could translate into something palatable, because the reality of it was fairly bleak.”

Listen to the interview with Frankie Boyle

9. Oliver Stone thinks George W. Bush is worse than Trump

Film-maker Oliver Stone has always been very vocal about his political views, so it’s no surprise when the conversation turns to the US presidency. Stone is no fan of Trump but considers George W. Bush worse. “To my mind, the worst president the United States has ever had,” he says of Bush. “The damage he did was far worse, so far, from what Trump has done. Far worse. Bush put this country on a new direction. He’s the one who started the major mass surveillance, and the wars, of course.”

Listen to the interview with Oliver Stone

10. Justin Theroux once ate a polystyrene cup

The series closes with Louis chatting to his cousin, actor/writer Justin Theroux. It features a lot of reminiscing about their childhoods, including the time Louis saw Justin eat a polystyrene cup. “I would have been eight or nine, and you would have been seven,” says Louis. “There was a do at one of our uncles’ houses and I looked over and saw you were eating a polystyrene cup.” Justin later threw up the bits of cup. “I have no recollection, but it’s entirely believable,” says Justin. “My mum used to give me glass cups and I would hook my [teeth] over the glass as I drank my drink… Many times… I would smash the glass, breaking glass into my mouth… Eventually she gave me plastic.”

Listen to the interview with Justin Theroux