{"id":824210,"date":"2026-08-24T12:46:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T12:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/824210\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T12:46:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T12:46:11","slug":"richard-e-grant-says-he-permanently-cut-friends-out-of-his-life-over-how-they-handled-his-wifes-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/824210\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard E Grant says he permanently cut friends out of his life over how they handled his wife\u2019s death"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Richard E Grant has revealed that he \u201cedited\u201d friends out of his life<\/a> after they avoided him following the death of his wife, Joan Washington.<\/p>\n

Washington \u2014 a renowned dialect coach \u2014 died in 2021, aged 74, eight months after being diagnosed with lung cancer. She and Grant, 69, had been married for 35 years<\/a> and shared one daughter, Olivia, 37.<\/p>\n

In the past, Grant has described how friends would avoid him<\/a> following Washington\u2019s death to avoid an awkward conversation.<\/p>\n

In a new interview with The Times<\/a>, Grant said he would never forgive those who kept their distance during that time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very unequivocal, black and white, all or nothing,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\"BritishBritish actor Richard E Grant has revealed he \u2018edited\u2019 friends out of his life after they avoided him following his wife\u2019s death (AFP\/Getty)\"Grant\u2019sGrant\u2019s wife, Joan Washington (right), died in 2021, less than a year after being diagnosed with lung cancer (AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve tried to go for the grey areas but it\u2019s not succeeded for very long. There are people that have been edited out of my life and I will never see them again. If I had done that to them, I wouldn\u2019t be able to look them in the face.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, portcullis down,\u201d he added. \u201cGoodbye.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grant went on to share that he still writes to Washington every night before bed and that the idea of finding companionship again was incomprehensible. \u201cI know it happens but I\u2019ve not had any twinkles of that yet,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the first time that Grant has been ruthless about cutting friends out of his life.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the Withnail and I actor revealed he cut off a friend of 29 years after he was accidentally CC\u2019d on an email filled with \u201cbrutal\u201d <\/a>comments about him.<\/p>\n

During a February episode of the Mad, Sad, & Bad podcast, Grant described the person as someone who he \u201cthought was one of the five best friends in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe sent an email from Africa to a mutual friend in Australia who’d asked for my email address, and, because my name was in the body of the email, I got inadvertently sent this email.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grant explained that the message \u201carrived on a day when I had heard for a third time that a film that I\u2019d written and was about to direct, the finances had collapsed. And I was doing the final episode of Frasier,\u201d which aired in May 2004.<\/p>\n

He said that the email contained \u201csuch toxicity\u201d that he immediately decided to cut off the friendship.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I thought, \u2018That’s not a real friend anymore.\u2019 And I was absolutely devastated,\u201d Grant said. \u201cSo I copied and pasted that and then sent it back. And I said, \u201829 years of friendship?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked what the offensive comments were about, Grant replied: \u201cIt was of my script that I had written, which was entirely autobiographical.\u201d Grant\u2019s 2005 comedy Wah-Wah was loosely based on his own life. \u201cAnd she had read this script.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said that years later, his daughter, now 37, had questioned whether the friendship was really genuine in the first place.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur daughter was very smart, because she was 16, so exactly 20 years ago. She said to me, \u2018In your heart of hearts, haven\u2019t you always known this about that person?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Grant added that the turn of events was \u201cjust brutal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause that person knows you in the most formative part of your life, when you’re still dreaming of getting regular work out there as an actor,\u201d Grant said. \u201cNevermind the other things that have happened to me since. So when you\u2019re betrayed like that, there\u2019s no going back for me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":824211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88],"class_list":["post-824210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=824210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/824211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}