Katie Piper recalls mental exhaustion filming Locked Up in Louisiana as trip extended

"I believe we all have it in us to be a killer, you just haven't met that person," she exclusively tells RadioTimes.com. "I suppose you sort of understand your privileges and you understand how lucky you are. But do you really until you go somewhere like that?"

Travelling to the US wasn't anything new for Piper, having previously been to various locations for her series Jailhouse Mums, but New Orleans was a challenge she hadn't expected.

Initially, Piper was only meant to be filming the series for a matter of weeks, but weeks turned into one month after learning more and more about the women she encountered.

It was as Piper spent more time with the inmates - often women accused of heinous crimes - that the process became exhausting.

"I'd not been to New Orleans and it was a real eye-opener just how difficult survival was for a lot of these women, and how abuse and violence was entrenched in their life," she explained.

Piper continued: "Many women that I interviewed, you did really wrestle morally with what some people had done. But sometimes knowing that had they not killed the people they'd killed, you would never have met them, because they wouldn't be here, they would be dead."

This knowledge led to Piper ending up "very conflicted at the end of the day".

She told RadioTimes.com: "One filming day would be so exhausting mentally because you'd start getting close to these women in some places, having fun with them, and then empathising with them and hugging them and crying with them.

"And then you'd go to a place of being angry with them and cross with them, and then they'd show a lack of remorse, and then you'd dehumanise them. And then you go back around full circle. By the time you left, you'd be like, 'Oh my god, I'm exhausted.'"

In the first episode alone, Piper meets an inmate accused of killing her husband and learns that she had suffered a lifetime of abuse, first as a child and then at the hands of her husband.

"I wanted to go and meet these women and understand their individual stories, and not just the crime that led them to be incarcerated, but their whole lives leading up to that crime," Piper continued.

She added: "It ended up having to be five episodes and I ended up staying out there for an entire month, because every single woman was different, and it was completely fascinating, and it made you realise that you are no different to them, and you are one bad day or one choice or one decision from being incarcerated yourself.

"Some of these women never thought they'd find themselves there either, and it was just a very life-changing project for me, beyond just making a programme or it being a job."

Elsewhere in the episode, Piper spends time with an inmate with a lifetime of drug abuse who is facing a charge of second-degree murder, but is insistent she is innocent.

But while the presenter did speak with these women, it took time for Piper to connect with them and have them open up to her.

"A month isn't that long, but one or two days in prison is almost like two or three weeks in the outside world," Piper explained to RadioTimes.com.

She continued: "Everything is intensified and everything is fast-tracked, and the women are lacking so much. They're lacking connection, they're lacking intimacy, they're lacking relationships. So once you're in their trust, they really do open up to you."

As the series gets fully released on U&W, plenty of viewers will be keen to see if Piper has any more documentaries up her sleeve - something she is interested in doing.

"I think probably it would be going to different states," she noted, adding that what made Louisiana "very unique" was its lack in self-defence laws, "which left so many women vulnerable to [lengthy] sentences for killing their attackers".

She added: "I would like to go to other places in the state, less conservative states and see what the situation is there."

Katie Piper: Locked Up In Louisiana is available on Sunday 27th April at 9pm on U&W. Stream free on U.

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