Advice for conducting an interview with a senior politician (Social Anxiety)

I’m soon going to be conducting an interview with the ex head of state of my country and I’m looking for a few tips and tricks. It’s part of documentary my company is producing for a client, as part of that we’re interviewing senior politicians.

My issue is that I have autism and I struggle with eye contact. The topic and conversation is not a problem, neither is me asking the question and extracting a story, but I really struggle with looking people in the eye when listening to their answers. In the past, including for very senior figures, I often look at the monitor next to me that shows the recording and rotate between the subject and monitor, I find it helps me to listen to them and puts them at ease compared to my “unnatural” eye contact - which I find (maybe imagining this) is quite forced.

Now my worry is that I can’t pull that trick with this kind of senior figure and I want to ask for tips on how you might approach social anxiety during such a situation. It’s a sit down interview, imagine bbc style with a sit down set, a big crew, for around 30-45 minutes of conversation about a specific topic. It’s not an interrogation but more about understanding what the government did and why it matters.

I worked hard to be in this position but honestly scared to crumble. I realise it’s exposure therapy in a way but being on the spectrum means that this all intensifies in high-pressure situations