Richard E. Grant has spoken on how his social life has changed since the death of his wife, Joan Washington.
Washington passed in 2021 at 75-years-old, following her battle with lung cancer.
Speaking with The Times and Sunday Times at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, the 2019 Oscar nominee shared the sad news that he’s lost a number of friends since his beloved wife’s death.
Watch the video above.
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“Subsequent to her death, I have had people cross the road rather than talk,” he said.
“Whether they think you’re going to fall apart and you’re an emotional wreck, I don’t know. But I will never speak to them again.”
He shared a story of a couple who had lived close to he and Washington’s Provence holiday home ignoring him on the street.
“As I walked towards them they both turned their heads,” he explained.
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“I thought, ‘F—you.’ I felt I was being punished because Joan had died. They had never acknowledged it. Maybe they didn’t know how to deal with it.
“In not talking about it, you are denying somebody. I don’t know whether it’s a particularly English thing, but I find that if people don’t talk about it, it feels very hurtful. Or just mean.”
Grant has been open about his grieving process, speaking about Washington on several occasions since her passing.
In an interview with The Independant earlier this year, Grant revealed that he still has conversations with his late wife in his head.
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“I don’t talk out loud [to her], but after 38 years together I know I can anticipate or predict what her response to whatever’s happening in my day would be,” he explained.
“So I have a silent conversation with her, especially at the steering wheel at the end of a day, or at the end of a show… cross-reference what she would be thinking.”
The couple were married in 1986, and shared two children together over their 38 year relationship.
