Hot Shots 2023: Louis Lee Ray

Louis Lee Ray spent most of the 2020 lockdowns trying to negotiate access to the people surrounding the most powerful man in the world – from his living room.

The task of trying to secure interviews with the likes of Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani for The Trump Show, a four-part doc series on BBC2, took every ounce of the skills he learned as BBC broadcast journalist – but he succeeded.

As a broadcast journalist, Ray had been part of the team nominated for a Royal Television Society award for uncovering sexual abuse in football, but in 2019, he decided to switch track, becoming a development producer for 72 Films, then assistant producer on BBC2’s Bafta-nominated The Rise Of The Murdoch Dynasty.

In the wake of his triumph with Donald Trump’s confidants, as well as on a feature-length pandemic doc for Channel 4 – The Year That Britain Stopped – he served as casting producer for the three-part C4 series Spice Girls: How Girl Power Changed Britain.

In 2021, he made the jump to producer, working on an as-yet-unannounced three-part series for a major streamer and on 72 Films’ upcoming four-part Boris Johnson doc for C4. For the latter, he has helped to plot episode outlines on a series spanning several decades and negotiated access to many of the country’s most influential politicians, conducting many of the interviews.

Rob Coldstream, executive producer at 72 Films, describes Ray as “relentless, resilient and resourceful”. He adds: “His judgement is impeccable, he’s calm under pressure and good humoured in the face of adversity.”