Stacey Dooley tackles child 'GunTubers' in new Sleeps Over Stateside series

The hit three-part series, which explores modern families and couples by spending a long weekend at their home, not only invites 35-year-old Dooley to bed down and share meals with her hosts but also to intimately explore their attitudes to love, relationships, parenting, money and beyond.

“I don’t think there are many series quite like Sleeps Over…” she muses over the hit format. “I think it’s because we genuinely stay there and we genuinely immerse ourselves with the family, which totally changes the dynamic.

“The whole process gets put on fast-forward, as you start off having these candid conversations, then you’re having to sit down for dinner together or asking them how to use their shower or having to sneak past their bedroom when you need the loo at 3am…” reasons the star, who filmed the series whilst pregnant last summer and recently gave birth to her first child, daughter Minnie, with ex-Strictly Come Dancing pro Kevin Clifton.

“So you get a wider understanding of who they are a lot quicker, as opposed to how you would if you were interviewing them in a neutral space.”

The Luton-born presenter can certainly draw on her experience, for she has become a mainstay in the investigative journalism arena having first rose to prominence when she travelled to India for the BBC Three series Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts in 2008.

This latest series continues her reign on the small screen as each episode tells a compelling story of modern American life.

First up is the aforementioned nine-year-old, Autumn, who having picked up her first gun at the age of just two, now has 36 of her own as well as a dedicated YouTube channel where she reviews and tests out semi-automatic weapons for her 200,000 subscribers.

Dooley meets her and her family, including father Randy and mother Lindsay, who move from state to state in their RV and have settled in Oklahoma, where they can benefit from relaxed gun laws.

Autumn is “really charismatic and incredibly bright”, Dooley recalls. “She’s super switched on and, at times, you almost forget that you’re talking to a prepubescent child. She’s not even 10 but having quite lengthy discussions about what guns mean to her and why they’re such a massive part of her life and culture.

“I fundamentally disagree with America’s relationship with firearms,” she points out. “But at the end of the day she’s nine years old and I’m not there to give a child a hard time. We’re there to truly understand why there are families like hers in America and to try and see life through her lens.”

Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over USA lands on W and UKTV Play on Wednesday February 22.