In 2006 and again in 2011, Louis Theroux travelled to America to film a documentary with the Phelps family and their religious hate-group, the Westboro Baptist Church.
Led by Pastor Fred Phelps, the two documentaries revealed the inner workings and focused on what drives the hatred and venom that's made up so much of their controversy. Now, in 2019, Louis Theroux is planning a third documentary and the first in the wake of both Donald Trump's hate-filled presidential campaign and Fred Phelps' death in 2016. Not only that, the Westboro Baptist Church itself has had a number of defections - including Pastor Fred Phelps' own daughter, Megan.
In an official statement released by the BBC, Theroux explained that through the "unique access to the inner workings of the Wesboro Baptist Church over the last 13 years we’ve been able to track the changes in an extreme religious group from the inside, and also from the perspective of its ex-members."
"We’ve been able to tell a story about indoctrination, where it comes from, how it is enforced - but also about deradicalisation, and the way in which a handful of those who were formerly zealots have managed to break free and take a kinder less hateful view of the world."
No air date has been set for 'Louis Theroux: Surviving America’s Most Hated Family', but the one-off documentary is expected to arrive some time before the end of the year.
