Actor Richard E Grant has reflected on the kindness the new King, Charles III, showed his wife, Joan Washington, before her death last year.
The voice coach, who worked with stars including Penelope Cruz and Jessica Chastain, died in September last year aged 74, eight months after she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
Reflecting on her death in his upcoming memoir, Grant recalled a visit arranged by Charles – who ascended to the throne yesterday following the death of the Queen on Thursday aged 96 – before Washington’s death, in which he arrived with ‘a bag of mangos and a bunch of highly scented roses from his Highgrove garden’.
Swazi-English actor Grant, praises the new King in his forthcoming memoir, A Pocketful Of Happiness, saying Charles and the new Queen Consort Camilla sent long, solicitous letters and arranged a visit to Highgrove House around Washington’s medical appointments after learning of her diagnosis.
According to Grant, Camilla had sent a note saying she was thinking of the pair ‘at this horrid time’ and that Charles sent a ‘two-page, handwritten letter, full of love, compassion, empathy and encouragement’.
He wrote of Charles’ visit, via The Mail on Sunday: ‘Instantly at ease, and complimentary about our cottage and garden, he hugs and kisses Joan, then sits beside her on the sofa in the pergola. They chat non-stop for the next half-hour. At one point, taking her hand and saying, “It’s been an absolute honour to have known you, Joan”, to which she quips, “I’m still here!” which makes us all laugh.’
Grant, who is an ambassador for The Prince’s Trust, told You magazine: ‘He’s a well-documented fan of accents and The Goon Show, and as my wife was an accent coach he loved her ability to do different voices.
‘They were both extraordinarily kind, visiting and so on, given how busy he is.’
In his memoir Grant, 65, has also praised a number of famous faces who were at his side when he was grieving.
He said TV chef Nigella Lawson ‘cabbed food over every single Sunday’, while Gabriel Byrne, who played Grant’s alcoholic father in film Wah-Wah, sat for hours chatting with Washington in their Cotswold cottage.
Similarly, Grant said Melissa McCarthy, who was nominated for an Oscar alongside him for 2018’s Can You Ever Forgive Me?, was endlessly supportive in text and in person, with the actor calling her ‘a five-star treat’.
Speaking about his grief, Grant said: ‘Like the weather, it changes a lot every hour. Something can trigger you completely unexpectedly.
‘You’ll be standing in the supermarket and just have to crumple because something has reminded you.
‘Or you see somebody that you haven’t seen for a while who you then have to console as they’re upset because they have just heard what’s happened to my wife.
‘So I think you don’t get over grief – and I know this from the death of our first child – but you go around it. It’s a daily navigation.’
The actor, who described his new memoir as the ‘love story of my life’, married Washington in 1986 and they had a daughter, Olivia. Washington also had a son, Tom, from a previous relationship.
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