'We’d been through nothing like that before' Louis Theroux reveals his wife Nancy suffered two miscarriages
Documentary filmmaker has Louis Theroux opened up about wife Nancy’s two miscarriages, before the ‘traumatic’ birth of their third child.
Writing in his new autobiography, Gotta Get Theroux This, Louis discusses both his professional and personal life, including the loss of two children.
Louis wrote, ‘I cursed myself for the foolhardiness we’d shown in taking [Nancy] through the blood-letting of another round of human creation...
'Getting to term had been a trial, two had ended in miscarriage. There were tears on a weekend in Yosemite...’
He added, 'We’d been through nothing like that before. A language of grief and the social forms I was versed in did not seem adequate to the occasion.
‘But sadness was complete and if I’m honest, I didn’t understand what she was going through. It still seemed abstract to me whereas for Nancy the babies had been real'.
Louis Theroux's book is now available to buy online, and is a personal look at his life so far.
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Following the miscarriages, the couple had a traumatic experience during the birth of their third son, Walter.
Describing the birth, Louis said, ‘When they raised the baby’s head, tiny, cross faced and smeared like a bagel in what looked like cream cheese and jam I glanced at Nancy...
'I thought “we’re not doing this again”. He’d arrived after a harrowing - section one afternoon at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington...
'Nancy looked half-dead afterwards, as pale as a vampire. The procedure had been delayed and delayed for various reasons. We felt like passengers whose flight kept getting cancelled...’
He added, 'The same sense of boredom and impotence but also fear. Then when it was going on there was a sense of hushed urgency and conferences. Vital signs were dipping and my mind naturally went to the worst place.'
Louis Theroux and Nancy Strang now have three children together - Frederick, Albert and Walter. They have been married since 2012, after Louis proposed to her after 10 years as a couple.
After realising he’d been focusing more on work than their marriage, Louis admitted he doesn’t discuss his iconic and often controversial documentaries with Nancy.
He said, ‘One of the things my wife has to deal with is that when we’re in company, the conversation revolves around my work almost to a disproportionate extent, so when I get home she’s not, like, ‘Well, what happened today on the mother and baby unit, darling?’ I don’t always trouble her with the details.’
Lucy Buglass is a Digital Writer for What's on TV, Goodto.com, and Woman&Home. After finishing her degree in Film Studies at Oxford Brookes University she moved to London to begin her career. She's passionate about entertainment and spends most of her free time watching Netflix series, BBC dramas, or going to the cinema to catch the latest film releases.