Filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi is not afraid of confrontation. For her new HBO documentary, “The Insurrectionist Next Door,” she profiled some of the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
These are people who joined the crowd that threatened her own mother, then-Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.
In the film, Pelosi follows them in their daily lives and meets their families.
The result is a surprisingly candid and mostly friendly exchange with people whom she says Oath Keepers leaders designated as “normies.”
“There was a group of people who had intentions of taking over our democracy and having a coup that day,” she says. “But they needed this chorus of ‘normies,’ these regular guys from all across America, to participate.”
Among those “normies,” Pelosi featured a young woman from Missouri who entered the building, took a selfie and left, and ended up getting 30 days in jail. And a man who walked onto the Senate floor with a Trump flag and got eight months in jail, is featured too.
To this day, most of these people still support former President Donald Trump and believe the 2020 election was stolen.
In her documentary, Pelosi has frank exchanges with them. She asks Johnny Harris, from North Carolina, whether he considers himself a ‘normie.’ She asks Emily Hernandez, from Missouri, whether she went to the Capitol to assassinate her mother. “No!” responds the woman emphatically.
“These are American citizens who took misdemeanors and will be voting in the next election,“ she says. “We need to talk to them. We need to listen to them. We need to have a conversation because we talked about how divided the country is and we want to try to heal.”
The HBO documentary “The Insurrectionist Next Door,” streams now on Max.
Adeline Sire produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt. Sire also adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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