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Review
Louis Theroux Interviews: Anthony Joshua, review: is the grand inquisitor going soft?
Theroux landed plenty of blows, but the documentarian – a gentler force these days – spared the boxing champ from hitting the canvas
Twenty years ago, having made his name hanging out with weirdos, Louis Theroux turned to celebrity. In When Louis Met his goal was to unpick the lock of some truly baffling oddballs and undesirables. Infamously, Jimmy Savile was one. His subjects in Louis Theroux Interviews (BBC Two) are, without exception, much less maladjusted company.
Take Anthony Joshua, first up in this second series. His job is hitting people in the head, but otherwise he’s an absolute sweetie. Lives with his mum, gives away pots of money, takes selfies with everyone. In his own words: “Just one of us.”
He also proved a twinkle-toed sparring partner. “Questions are being asked about whether you will be the fighter that everyone dreamed of you being,” Theroux suggested warily. “Are you the same person you was 10 years ago?” countered Joshua. “No, I’m better,” improvised Theroux. “That was a joke by the way.”
Is he better? Softer, perhaps. Twice, worried he had his man on the ropes, Theroux politely proposed a break for tea or pizza. Back in the day he’d have kept jabbing. But then back in the day he’d have itched to grill Joshua’s more cussed and ornery rival Tyson Fury, who has his own reality show. “He’s very quotable, isn’t he?” said a guarded Joshua who, cuddly as Dame Judi, is the ideal subject for avuncular establishment-Theroux.
In the boxing world, the encounter will doubtless be parsed for runic clues about where Joshua’s head is. Mainly it was charming knockabout stuff. Theroux looked genuinely embarrassed asking tabloid-y questions about girlfriends, and whose toes didn’t curl when he had a stab at matching Joshua’s rap with his own? Joshua attributed his success to God. “That’s not the answer I was looking for,” said Theroux drily, after an immaculate pause.
Betraying few signs that he knows or perhaps cares much about boxing, he tried to get Joshua to admit that the hunger has gone. It was only at the end, when Theroux proposed that Joshua should have retired, that there was a whiff of cordite. Joshua glared at his interrogator, then fired off a series of questions he answered himself. He had become his own interviewer.
“Maybe I should stop,” Joshua concluded. “But I can’t deal with it.” It won’t go viral, like that clip from the first series in which Katherine Ryan talked in code about Russell Brand. But after much patient toing and froing, this was the closest Theroux came to a knockout blow.