Anna Maxwell Martin laid bare the reality of her grief, four years after the death of her husband, film and theatre director Roger Michell, in an emotional appearance on ITV’s The Assembly.
The Motherland star appeared on the series’ second season this Tuesday (21 April) – which sees a panel of neurodivergent and learning-disabled interviewers ask unfiltered questions – when the conversation took a deeply personal turn.
One panelist called Mike opened up about losing his father before asking Anna how she and her daughters, Maggie and Nancy, have coped since Roger’s death in 2021. Her response was immediate and disarmingly honest.
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“People don’t ask because they’re scared,” Anna replied. “For my kids, it was four years ago. I give you all the strength I can muster because it’s a long road where you need a lot of patience.”
The conversation struck a deeper chord as Anna reflected on how her husband’s death reopened old wounds from her own past. “I lost my dad when I was 24 and it was very, very hard. I felt very alone, and then it happened to my children,” she said.
Fighting back tears, Anna described the pressure of trying to hold everything together for her daughters while navigating her own grief. “I really tried to be the best mum that I could for them. Sometimes I failed in that.”
Anna also acknowledge how the loss reshaped her. “I know this is a real cliché but I think it’s true,” she added. “It has made me, bizarrely, such a positive, tenacious person. In the end, it’s been really f****** hard but it makes me smash the doors off of life.”
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Anna first met Roger Michell in 2003, while working at the National Theatre, before reconnecting a year later on the film Enduring Love. They tied the knot in 2010 and went on to have two daughters together, keeping their family life largely out of the public eye.
After more than a decade together, the couple separated amicably in 2020. A year later, Roger died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 65, leaving Anna juggling her work and family obligations in the aftermath of his passing.
Speaking to the iPaper in December 2025, Anna spoke candidly of the realities of dealing with grief, particularly when it comes to parenting. She shared how she keeps Christmas celebrations to a minimum since Roger’s death. “As a bereaved family, I’m really cautious around the pressure I put on Christmas,” she said at the time.
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“Sometimes we do literally nothing and it’s fine.” She added: “Christmas is overwhelming for many. There’s often this idea that other people are having a jollier time or have more stuff. That can be really difficult. So we like to keep it really small. I always tell the girls all I want is a homemade card, which they take the mick out of me for.”
Despite the weight of her experiences, Anna’s appearance on The Assembly wasn’t only defined by grief. The interview also offered rare glimpses of her life outside of it – from her routines with her daughters to her fear of sandwiches.
In recent years, Anna has found love again. Since 2022, Anna has been linked to cameraman Richard Cornelius and confirmed their relationship during the show before lifting the lid on how they met.
“We’d just come out of Covid, I was on a production and I thought ‘he looks nice’,” she remembered. “So I made it clear to him that I thought he looked nice and then we went on a date.”