Louis Theroux

I think I have a slight fear of intimacy.

I think of myself as being quite affable, approachable, fairly easy to get to know.

I'm not trying to acquire a reputation as serious documentary maker for its own sake.

Clearly I'm able to read emotions. But I do feel... What is it? Awkwardness. I'm not a slick dude. That's what it comes down to. The nakedness, the guilelessness... that's quite real.

Sometimes I feel a bit socially disconnected in terms of being a little bit gullible about how people interrelate emotionally.

I'm not that comfortable doing polemic or being strident.

There are fear mongers who talk about Islam as somehow it is an incubator of hate... remember Christians, like the Westboro Baptist Church, are just as capable of promoting intolerance.

I think Donald Trump's had a pattern of leaping on the bandwagon of anything that he feels will further his candidacy, and if that means sowing more fear and paranoia and playing into a kind of xenophobic populist strain, then that's what he will do.

I would love to make a film in the outback or in Papua New Guinea, in Port Moresby. I know that it's not in Australia, but it's not too far.

When you don't have access to a subject, and all you have is ex-members and critics, there is this gravitational pull toward telling a certain version of events. Scientology would say this, and they have a point, that it's like doing a portrait of a marriage in which you're only hearing from the ex-wife and not the ex-husband.

I think what I'm good at is getting to know people and trying to build a relationship over a few weeks and trying to get to the truth.

I am always drawn to things that feel different to what I would experience at home: things that offer a combination of unfamiliarity and a sort of bleak glamour. I think the outback has that.