THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.192 - RICHARD E GRANT

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

Adam talks with Swazi-British actor and writer Richard E Grant about sex, grief, Withnail and much else.This conversation was recorded face to face in London on 29th September, 2022Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support.Podcast artwork by Helen GreenRELATED LINKSBUG VIDEO NASTIES (HORROR SPECIAL) @ BFI SOUTHBANK, 4th & 18th NOVEMBER, 2022INTO THE RED (BIRD BOOK FEATURING A POEM AND DRAWING BY ADAM) - 2022A POCKETFUL OF HAPPINESS by Richard E Grant - 2022 (WORLD OF BOOKS)THE RICHARD E GRANT TEMPLE (Well curated fan site)WITHNAIL AND I 30 YEARS ON - RICHARD E GRANT AND BRUCE ROBINSON DISCUSS THE FILM (LIVE Q & A @ BFI) - 2017RICHARD E GRANT BREAKS DOWN HIS CAREER FROM 'DOWNTON ABBEY' TO 'STAR WARS' - 2020 (VANITY FAIR) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Hey, how you doing, podcats? Adam Buxton here, reporting to you from a dusky farm track in Norfolk, East England.

It is the end of October 2022. As I record this Sunday night, the day before Halloween, the clocks went forward this morning and they screwed up the timing of my day. For the last few weeks, I've been recording these intros and outros for the podcast on a Sunday afternoon before the sun goes down with Rosie. But today, it all went wrong, and now the sun has just set, which means by the end of this, I'm going to be stumbling around in total darkness. I've got Rosie on the lead. She says hi, by the way. Rosie, come and say hello to the podcats. No, thanks. I'll trot on.

She's going to trot on. Anyway, she's doing well. I hope you're doing well, too. Now, I'm going to get on and tell you a little bit about podcast number 192, which features a rambling conversation with Swazi British actor and writer Richard E Grant. Grant facts! Richard was born in 1957 in the southern African country of Eswatini or Swaziland

as it was then known. He studied English and drama at the University of Cape Town before moving to England in 1982 to pursue his acting ambitions. Later that same year, in the Actors' Centre in central London, Richard met the woman who would become his wife, the celebrated dialect coach Joan Washington. Joan Washington. In 1986, Richard began another important relationship in his life with writer and director Bruce Robinson, who cast him as an embittered out-of-work actor who, along with his flatmate, lives a life of squalor and booze in London at the dog end of the swinging 60s. Released in 1987, Withnail and I has gone on to be considered by many, including Adam Buxton, as one of the greatest comedy films of all time. In 1989, Richard starred in another Bruce Robinson production, How to Get Ahead in Advertising, playing an ad exec whose crisis of creativity results in a large boil on his neck

that grows into a second antagonistic head and eventually takes him over. Quite a mad film, with some still very pertinent and funny satirical swipes at the advertising industry. In the 1990s, Richard appeared in films like Steve Martin's L.A. Story, Martin Scorsese's Age of Innocence, Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Robert Altman's The Player. And of course, Spice World, the Spice Girls movie. His book, With Nails, published in 1996, was a well-received collection of candid diary accounts detailing the ups and downs of his acting career up to that point. A couple of the less successful projects Richard wrote about in With Nails were 1991's Hudson Hawk, starring and co-written

by Bruce Willis as a wise-cracking cat burglar, and Robert Altman's Pret-a-Porter, a largely improvised satire of the fashion world, filmed in 1994 at the real Paris Fashion Week. Happily, Richard was reunited with Altman in 2001 for the considerably more successful Gosford Park, a murder mystery slash skewering of class dynamics set in a 1930s English stately home. The 2000s also saw Richard writing and directing the largely autobiographical film Wawa, in which the protagonist witnesses the disintegration of his parents' marriage through adultery and alcohol during the last gasp of the British Empire in late 60s Swaziland. More recently, Richard's film roles have included parts in Star Wars, The Rise of Skywalker, the TV series Loki, and in 2018,

director Marielle Heller's film Can You Ever Forgive Me? in which Richard co-starred with Melissa McCarthy in a story based on real events in which American biographer Lee Israel was induced by financial troubles to forge historical letters. Richard played the author's close friend and accomplice and was showered with awards, including an Oscar nomination nomination for best supporting actor it's really good can you ever forgive me and richard's brilliant in it if you haven't seen it

it is fun but also moving my conversation with richard was recorded face to face in late september of this year 2022 in a small studio once again in the Universal building in King's Cross, thanks to Rachel and Tom and everyone there for making us welcome. Almost immediately, Richard and I got into spicy conversational territory. No, we didn't talk about Spice World, but at various points we did talk about how straight or not Richard might be, our favourite saucy film scenes, and the challenges of maintaining sex within a marriage.

In case you're worried, I did clear that section with my wife. My wife. We also talked about the death from cancer of Richard's wife, Joan, in September 2021, and his book, Pocketful of Happiness, which takes the form of diaries written in the last months of her life. This account of how the couple and their daughter Olivia dealt with Joan's illness is punctuated by some industrial-strength name-dropping and showbiz recollections, which provide a glamorous counterpoint to the sometimes painfully intimate details of Richard and Joan's final months together. Our conversation turned out to have a similar sort of structure,

and as well as talking about grief and death etiquette, Richard shared stories about a few of his film roles, including Pret-a-Porter, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and of course, With Nail and Eye. Bram Stoker's Dracula, and of course, with Nail and I. As you'll hear, Richard is honest, funny, engaging, and great to talk to. I loved spending time in his company. I'll be back at the end with a bit more waffle, but right now, with Richard E. Grant. Here we go.

Ramble Chat, let's have a ramble chat. Ramble Chat I do prefer it if it's face to face. What, so you can smell the person? I mean, there's that. Although I can't smell very well after having had COVID. You can smell well though, right? You're a fragrance guy. Yeah. You got here nice and early.

So you beat me to the punch. I was going to change and freshen myself up a little bit for you. Instead, we've jumped right in. Well, listen, he's pretty fragrant, so it's all right. We're safe. You see, you never just smell people on Zoom. But don't you think it makes a difference being in a room with someone? Don't you think there's a different energy if you're communicating via the internet? There's a different energy.

But I think that the advantage of Zoom is that you maintain eye contact, which I find I'm not so good at doing in real life. Oh, really? Whereas on Zoom, it never crosses my mind to look away. I always just look absolutely at the person. Yeah. I used to be fundamentalist about it and say, no, I don't want to do any Skype interviews or anything like that.

It has to be face-to-face. Let's keep it real. And COVID changed that. COVID changed all that because it made it impractical. And then I just had to get used to it like everyone else. And surprise, surprise, it was perfectly fine most of the time. So what you're saying is that we're animals and you like to be in the same proximity to them. Yeah. Yeah. And also, you know, it just raises your game or it does for me anyway, because I know I have to,

I can't just sit there scratching my nuts while I'm chatting to the other person one time I maybe I shouldn't admit this one time I went to I actually urinated during a zoom meeting into a receptacle that's who you're dealing with not out of fear out of necessity because you couldn't you couldn't interrupt proceedings yeah exactly and who were you interviewing? It was a meeting. It wasn't an interview. Okay. But it still was not cool. I'm not bragging. This is bad.

And what did you pee into? Into a Lord of the Rings cup, like a big slurpy cup that you get from the cinema. And what happened to the cup? I just gave it a jolly good wash. It's a great cup. A jolly good wash. Now, when we were just coming through the fancy doors in this extraordinary building that we're recording in, I asked you why you live in Norfolk, and you said because your wife is Norfolkian.

Yeah, I'm married to a beautiful Norfolk woman. And so I said, is she alpha? And you said yes. So you are, by that, I take it, a feminine masculine while she is masculine feminine. Is that correct? Yeah, I would say. Maybe that's true. I also said the word cuck there.

That is internet troll parlance for a sort of beta male. How do you spell it? C-U-C-K. It's a contraction of cuckold. Oh, cuck. So you're a cuck? I would say, yeah. Well, then I'm a full cuck. A load of old cuck. No, I was at a party in 1990 in Los Angeles. It was four o'clock in the morning. Most of the people were, by that time, you can imagine, pretty wasted. And it was during the making of Robert Altman's The Player. And Tim Robbins was the lead.

His then partner was Susan Sarandon. And at about four in the morning, she said to me, oh, do you know what you are? And I said, what do you mean? And she said, well, if you take masculine, masculine, masculine, feminine, feminine, feminine, feminine, masculine, as these i said what is pop psychology said yeah i suppose it is um i said so explain more and she said well

it's nothing to do with the sexual orientation of somebody it's what their predominant characteristic is so i said well give me an example. She said, well, I think that Prince Charles, she'd never met him, is a feminine masculine man, and that Princess Diana was, in likelihood, feminine feminine, so they cancel each other out. Camilla Parker Bowles, masculine feminine. So, that is the yin and yang of that. It works. I won't tell you what she said about well she did ask me what I thought

Tim Robbins was and I told her and then I told her what I thought the state of their relationship might be like so you can figure that one out but she said you know Richard what are you and she didn't know my wife and I said I'm definitely feminine masculine and she said what is your wife I said oh alpha male masculine feminine

and then you can apply that out of all the psychology that i've read philosophy books you know up down and sideways it is the most foolproof and simplistic effective way of understanding what you're dealing with and you can apply it to politics that you know the moment we've we've had the battle ofondes, we've got Putin, who's triple masculine, you know, obviously with a tiny penis because he has those tables so long. You know, the people are sort of scrotally right at the farthest end, you know, in terror of being outdicked. Dropped through the floorboards into the shark tank. Then we've had, you know, Boris Johnson, who is masculine masculine with a with a faux, you know, moppie blonde, but he's masculine, masculine. And then Donald Trump, who was probably drag act masculine.

George Bush, senior and junior, masculine, masculine, masculine, masculine. No negotiation yet fixed. Barack Obama, you know he's feminine, masculine. Michelle, masculine, feminine. Clinton, feminine, masculine. Hillary, probably double masculine. Yeah. so do you think that's true i think it's there's a lot of truth to it how does it work though all i think all those examples were sort of cis um gender people i.e people who identify as the gender they were assigned at birth and And I think they were all hetero people.

Okay. Elton John, who I know, is masculine masculine. He is very quick tempered, fairly intransigent, very dominant, and it's his way or the highway. And he'll say that about himself. And you know, even if you haven't met him, you know that David Furnish is feminine masculine. He's accommodating, he negotiates, you know, he does all those things. And that's how their relationship obviously operates. So there are two gay men who it operates like that.

Okay. And you reckon you're feminine masculine? Feminine masculine masculine absolutely okay how gay are you would you say um gosh out of 10 i don't know how would you answer that about yourself you see the fact that i'm not threatened by you asking me that immediately tells you that i'm feminine masculine yes a masculine masculine man would probably either kick your teeth and obey out the door yeah but you'd have to in this and age, you'd have to be very masculine to do that, to get upset by that question. Believe me, I've met them.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So how gay out of 10 are you? Out of 10, hmm, four. Four. I mean, considering I'm heterosexual. Yeah, but so how are you defining what would make, what are the four out 10, 40 percent of yourself that is you identify as being gay like? Well, before I answer that, I would say that the reason I felt comfortable asking you the question was that I pick up your feminine ascendant qualities.

Yeah. And the fact that you also are good at playing gay roles. Right. good at playing gay roles right and even when you're straight even when you're aggressively straight as a character yeah how to get ahead in advertising for example okay there is a kind of pent-up aggression that reads a little bit as suppressed gay to me when i watch that part okay i've never never heard that that's extraordinary well calling dr freud okay well let's keep dr freud on hold because i'm going to return to that way of thinking in a second but as far as i'm concerned uh i mean everyone's sort of gay a little bit on some level whether they care to admit it or not yeah it's floating around there it's a question of how much you engage with it, I think. For me, it was like for a lot of people, being a Bowie fan made me feel unthreatened by the idea of engaging with anything like that, you know, and find and realizing that men were beautiful, often even straight men and and it wasn't a problem necessarily for me fancying women if i also

could appreciate that there was such a thing as a beautiful even fanciful man even if i wouldn't necessarily want to go to bed with them have you bonked a man no no kissed a couple but in a sort of drunken look at me i'm kissing a man way right but no not really i do i do prefer women when it comes down to it in that way have you bonked a man not yet no but you know anything's possible sure exactly would you like me to well would you like to i mean you're interested in sex i heard you talking about the fact that when you are preparing for a role, you think about the sex life of the character. Yeah, because I think that once you intuit or understand what somebody's sexual interests are, that is the key to who they are. And I've applied it to all my friends and the people I've met, you know, in an instant, you think, what are they like in bed? Or what do they want? Because I always think sex is the stuff that

reveals your truest, your most animal desire. So trying to imagine that for a character, I always think is a sort of way in. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, does that make sense? Yeah, it makes total sense. Do you think that when you meet people? Do you think... I wonder how when last this person had some intimacy

or lack of intimacy. I definitely have done, but I don't do it up front because that feels a bit impolite somehow even just to think it you know what i mean well you're very very well brought up because i'm afraid that's the first thing i think i think what's this person like in bed and what what kind you know when last did they have it and how much do they want to still have it yeah yeah i think it's the it's the motor of everything so i'm absolutely horrified when i because i'm 65 and a half, that I have, I know people who either have separate bedrooms or just don't sleep together anymore. They say, you know, after all these years, enough is enough.

And I can't, I just can't get my head around that. I agree with you. I think it's really important. And again, you don't talk about it very often because it is tricky. Like, oh, yeah, the arrangements people have within a long term relationship are so complicated. Especially these days when humans are living much longer than they ever have done before. You know what I mean? So in the olden times, you only had to maintain your spicy sex life for a few years before one of you popped your clogs. Now you can be married to someone. You can have a relationship that goes on for like 50 years or something.

Okay. Well, I was together with my late wife for 38 years. And I can honestly hand on heart say that the bed department didn't diminish. It never became a routine that you had to... No, never. And I don't know whether it's... It may have been helped by, you know, the old cliche, absence makes the heart grow fonder, in that she was on location sometimes or I was on location,

so we were physically apart. But then, you know, we used to speak on the phone twice a day and look at each other on FaceTime or Skype. So, you know, there are different ways of doing it, but it didn't diminish. And you never had to get formal about it? You never had to sort of say, now, look, can we book a time? Because this is the thing about being a parent sometimes,

is that your attention is so um you know spread that's why young man you should only have one child which is what we did so you're not outnumbered seriously well that's great advice yeah she'd been around 20 years ago yeah how many have you got now three and more. Okay. No, that's it. So did relations resume with... Yeah, they resumed. Is it Mrs. Buxton? Am I allowed to say Mrs. Buxton or you're married? No, we are married, yes.

You're married. Yeah. We don't want to go to hell. What do you think? Of course. What do you think we're doing? Yeah. Yes.

But you see, after the first charge, you did, you know, things did resume because you have the evidence of two more that followed. Yeah, I'm like a randy little hobbit man anyway. Oh, you are? Yeah. And you're not diminishing at all. So you're just being sort of faux here saying, well, you know, it could diminish. So yours is not diminished. I mean, it's diminished in terms of actual numbers like the other day oh i was

watching your opening monologue from how to get ahead in advertising okay and you back to that you talk about four people on the planet that saw it you talk about at one point so in that film you are an advertising executive the film opens with you you talking about how to sell pimple cream, I think. And you are delivering this speech all about how cynical all corporations are, particularly you start talking about best company supermarkets. They're not interested in selling wholesome foods. They're not worried about the nation's health. What's concerning them is that the nation appears to be getting worried about its health. And so you go down that. It's a great speech. It's brilliant. Anyway, one of the things you say that stuck out to me, and I thought as a 53-year-old, I suddenly heard the line differently.

One of the things your character says is, I don't need to look at market research. I've lived with 13 and a half million housewives for 15 years. I know everything about them. She's 37 years old. She has 2.3 children, 1.6 of which will be girls. She uses 16 feet, 6 inches of toilet tissue a week and fucks no more than 4.2 times a month. There's Bruce Robinson, the writer, ranting for you. Yeah, but I was thinking 4.2 times a month. There's Bruce Robinson, the writer, ranting for you. Yeah, but I was thinking

4.2 times a month is pretty good. Oh, it is? Yes. That's once a week. Yes, once a week. That is great. Okay. Well, each to his own then.

Listen, I would be delighted if we could nudge that number a little higher. But it's... Mrs. Buxton, you heard it here. She knows it. And she's... I mean, she would instantly walk out if she ever heard this.

But luckily, she doesn't listen to the podcast. She'd instantly walk out because she's alpha male? She's alpha male, but easily... She doesn't think this is appropriate for public discussion. Ah, okay, right. You know what I mean? I have to respect that. Yeah, no, no. You know what I mean? I have to respect that. Yeah, no, no, you're quite right.

So I'm your guinea pig then. Yeah. What do you think? Mrs. Buxton can't take it, but old fairy Grant can. I better rephrase that. Pansexual Grant can. There were heavy quotes around all of that. Oh, man.

Four out of ten Buxton is giving it out today, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. Here we go. I apologize. Okay. Well, how about this then? Before we abandon this line of sort of sexual inquiry and Freudian theory. I'm up for anything. Open book. I said to you before that I feel comfortable asking you about this stuff because I got the vibe from a lot of your performances that you're not straight, straight, aggressively male.

And that there is a sort of sensitivity there and a femininity at work and a sort of gayness sometimes. Uh-huh. I always felt watching Withnail and I, especially at the end, that scene where they say goodbye in the rainy park. Yeah, with the wolves. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was a sort of heartbreaking love scene goodbye. I felt that, you know, at the end of your Hamlet monologue, when you say, man delights not me, no, nor women neither. And then you say, then you repeat, nor women neither again. I thought that's a tip off. He's gay. He loves Marwood. I mean, I know he loves Marwood as a friend, sure. But I thought it was really nice that that line between two men

being friends was being blurred a little bit. Right. You're not the first person that has pointed this out to me. It was news to me when the film came out and people suggested this um and in playing with nail it he seemed to me so cruel to marwood the paul mcgann character the eye of the title and um with nail is so narcissistically self-obsessed that the idea that he could ever fall in love with anybody else other than himself in his own self-pity, uh, precluded any... with everyone and everything that I thought of him as, in playing him, as asexual, almost, if there is such a thing, in the way that narcissists are. I can remember reading Kenneth Williams' diaries, which I think there was an entry in one year,

sort of like November, spent the afternoon which I think there was an entry in one year, sort of like, November, spent the afternoon in my very tight underpants, hoovering my flat, got an erotic charge out of it. And I thought, well, that is probably not unlike Withnil, that a man who's so consumed with his own, his self, that he could only maybe turn himself on auto-erotically if there is such a thing. That's how I thought about it. But I see, because it's come up before, how that can be. And especially because Bruce wrote the repetition, which isn't in Shakespeare, of nor women neither.

So I see that. Yeah. But it's what makes the performance so brilliant, I think, and heartbreaking, is that there is that possibility there. Even someone as vain and self-obsessed and selfish as Withnell feels something. He feels he's going to be lost without Marwood. He doesn't want him to leave. He knows that his life's never really going to amount to much. I mean, it's partly a career jealousy thing. He's heartbroken when Marwood gets the part. Hugely. Absolutely appalled. I think I'm also hugely affected by the fact that Vivian McCarroll, who Withnail was mostly based on, according to Bruce Robinson, he was heterosexual and never had a career. So it never really crossed my mind. But you know, you, you're, you're

making it cross my mind now, all these years later, post doing it in 1986. You write in your book about being visited on the set of how to get ahead in advertising. Do you have a researcher? Sorry to interrupt you. Do you have a researcher that, that does all this for you? No, this is just me. Okay. Um, so you're a researcher that does all this for you? No, this is just me. Okay. So you're a geek?

Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't want to talk to someone I didn't care about. Okay. Well, thank you. Well, thank you for doing it. So on the set of Advertising, I talk about being visited by… George Harrison. Yes. You talk about how exciting it was to meet George Harrison as a Beatles fan. You say, George told me about how much he loved Withnail, which threw me, as all I wanted to talk to him about and ask him about was the Beatles. He politely let me gabble away, giving no indication that he must have heard variations of this same old tune his entire adult life. But I was thinking, surely you have to deal with that with Withnail.

It's not even on a remotely similar level, you know, not being disingenuous. The Beatles were a global and continue to be a global phenomenon. Withnail has been seen by, percentage-wise, a very, very small number of people who obsess about it, but proportionately, there's no comparison. I would imagine if you walk down the street, 99.9% of the population would go, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know who he is either. Seriously. But it's like the Beatles compared to the

Velvet Underground. You know what I mean? With Nell is the Velvet Underground. So it's the it's the super influential band. It's the one that changed everybody's lives when they connected with it and they saw it. That was it. Still, I was thinking, what are the greatest, funniest films? Maybe you'll share some of yours with me. But I was thinking, like, some of the greatest comedy performances I can think of that mean a lot to me. Eddie Murphy in Trading Places. Genius. Jack Lemmon in Something Like It Hot. Yeah, there you go. Extraordinary.

Bridesmaids, What's Her Name? Melissa McCarthy. Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig. Yeah. And I think Withnail is right up there, definitely. Thank you. That's just like a solid goal. Like, you got that one in the bank, mate.

That's not going away. Thank you. And so it is a big deal. And it's one of those things, and I know other people who feel like this. If you meet someone and you find yourselves talking about with Nell and I and they say and they say, like, I'm not fussed, which doesn't happen very often. People have either seen it or not. If they have seen it, they probably like it. But if I meet someone like that, I do just sort of discount them. I just think, well, we don't have anything to talk about. How is Bruce Robinson, by the way? When I last heard, he was on very good form. He sent me a card last week that I Instagrammed about a picture of Nijinsky wearing a very fruity dress costume and then wrote inside, wearing a very fruity dress costume, and then wrote inside, found this picture of you from an old spotlight, the actor's directory, and in brackets, sorry, didn't get the gig, love.

And saying that he'd received a copy of my book, it looked very handsome. And he said, sending love, dot, dot, dot, if you need any. Absolutely typical of Bruce. And the combination of the picture and his text and the fact that he found this card in Hay-on-Wye, which he lives near nearby, really tickled me. So he is on feisty form and living grumpily in Herefordshire. On feisty form and living grumpily in Herefordshire. Yeah. So he is the opposite. I'm glass three quarters full of enthusiasm, annoyingly so to people, as I've discovered.

And he is Britishly morosely grumpy at all times. Yeah. Yet in you, he found someone who brilliantly articulated that splenetic voice in his head. Yes, because he knows how vicious I can be. Yeah, so there's that side of you in there as well, but to a smaller degree than... Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, if you're brought up with a violent alcoholic as a father, as I was, a violent alcoholic as a father, as I was,

then you have first-hand experience of somebody being staggeringly vituperative about his son, i.e. me, and all of his friends, which didn't correlate with how he was when he was sober, when he was charm and funny and engaged with people and was very popular and then by night after nine o'clock once the entire bottle of johnny walker had gone down his throat then this absolute monstrous alter ego would come out and because i didn't know better i deludedly thought oh that must be the truth. So when he said to me, you haven't a fucking chance I'll ever make it as an actor,

you stupid, pansy-boying about playing with string puppets and who the fuck do you think you are, all of that stuff, that the doubt that every actor has, having this combination of almost every actor I've ever met, of low self-esteem, large ego, which sounds like a contradiction, but is so common. That's the thing that squats on your shoulder and goes, yeah, you think you can do this part.

Oh, you think you can do that. You can't. You're bad. You're useless. You have no talent. That's the voice of my father that I have to consciously go shut up because I now have a career

that has spanned four decades to prove you wrong. But it doesn't entirely go away. And maybe that's a good thing. And were you able to like your dad, though, despite that? Oh, I absolutely loved him. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I loved him.

And I wanted to be like him. And I thought he was very quick. He was very provocative, open-minded, broad-minded, incredibly well-read read witty fast until he had the demon booze down him and then it was you know run for the hills and you were allergic to alcohol yeah i thought it was psychosomatic yeah i couldn't keep anything down more than 10 minutes and then i had a blood test when i was 16 or 17 i think i was and the doctor said to me, you can never drink

alcohol. I said, well, so what do I do when I go in a bar? Because, you know, everybody around is drinking. They certainly were when I was a teenager. And he said, oh, order a ginger ale and people will leave you alone. And it proved to be true. Is that what you still do to this day? Yeah. Ginger ale's all right. Yeah, ginger ale. And right yeah ginger and especially if you're at a wedding because then people assume that you want to be a party pooper and have a

glass full of you know something else yeah so ginger ale does it because it looks like champagne can i as a sort of semi-related swerve yes i was wondering if you might do an advert by way of reading out the blurb that you've written for your fragrance, Jack. Okay. And I was going to ask you about some of the ingredients. Okay. Do I go now? Sure. Okay. Jack Fragrance, which is unisex. unisex. I've been led by my nose all my life, having aimed it at plates of food, linen, fruit,

books, necks, fabric, flesh, flowers, cars, and everything else in between. To finally have a perfume of my own is the realization of a boyhood dream. All my favorite ingredients are here. Lime, marijuana, mandarin, vetiver, pepper, cloves, and gardenias. These earthy citrus scents combine to conjure up the hypnotic and unisex-y perfume I've imagined for so long. A sense of smell is the shortest synaptic leap in the brain to our memory, and every one of these ingredients is like a sensory trigger. I've aspired to create a fragrance that is as lickably moorish as it's addictive. Jack is my signature in scent. Thank you very much. Well, you asked me to do that.

Yeah, but I was thinking you might sell it a little bit more than that. Oh, I'm sorry. I was thinking you were going to get close on the mic. I mean, this is... How would you read it? All my favorite ingredients are here. Lime, marijuana, mandarin, vetiver. See, my instinct to anybody who

did that, I'd say, fuck off, and I'm never going to buy any of that if you think that I'm going to listen to that sales pitch. Yes, I was in the Himalayan mountains. And the waft of the zephyr of my auntie's skirt went past my leg. And I thought of that madeleine I ate in Paris in 1914. Here is the scent of that in a bottle. Oh, fuck off. Lickably Moor off. Lickably

Moorish. Lickably Moorish. Lickably Moorish. That's got to be close on the mic. How are you doing anyway? Like at this point, I'm going to change emotional gears. Okay. And you've been doing a lot of interviews around the publication of this book, Pocketful of Happiness. Just this week. Yeah.

And how has that been? I mean, it's not even a year since your wife died, right? It is. She died on the 2nd of September a year ago, and today is the 29th of September, a year later. Yeah. And it's a daily navigation. That's the best way I can put it. That grief feels like an abyss that you think, well, it's bottomless and you're never going to come out the other side of it. But you do because you have to. But the longing for that person best of health rather than the

eight-month deterioration of her lung cancer and the nightmare end of that has abated for which i'm very grateful but when you know the platitude of you know time heals and you get over it and all of that, I don't subscribe to that. And having our first daughter died after half an hour when she was born prematurely at 27 weeks at the end of the first week of rehearsals for Withnail. And at the time I thought, you don't get over grief, you go around it. You just have to accommodate and absorb it into your because it marks you and you can never go back to before and I suppose there's part of you that you don't want to because you always want to remember

as intensely as possible what that was and so in keeping a more detailed diary than i usually do on a daily basis when from the day that my wife is diagnosed to when she died eight months later was that i never wanted to forget in all the positive and the negative because sometimes things got very abrasive because she got so exhausted or i was confused about what was going on or what is the right medication or i was just physically tired as well um i wanted an honest record of that so that because that is part and parcel of your relationship does that answer your question yes because because it's ongoing as you because it's ongoing, as you say. Yeah, it's ongoing. I mean, do you find yourself getting sort of flashbacks a lot to those last few months? I ask because I wrote about my dad in his last months.

He came and lived with us when he was diagnosed with cancer. And I wrote about that. And I found it really tough to think back. I wrote about it a couple of years after he died. Actually, longer than that even. Three or four. I think I would have struggled writing about it before. It took at least a year before I could start remembering what he used to be like and happier things.

Has that been the case for you as well? Different experience. Up and down on a daily basis. You get too narmed by it, especially if you see somebody that you haven't seen for a long time or has only just heard that, you know, your wife has died. And that is difficult. You're then in the role of having to console them

while you're having to sort of regurgitate in an edited form what it was like. But my wife was so accepting and sanguine about it and Aberdonian Scots Calvinist, stoical and funny. And she said, which is why the title of the book is like one of those twee things that you get in a gift card but she did say to my daughter and i four days before she died i charge you both to try and find i know you'll be sad but a pocketful of happiness in each day and at the time i sort sort of dismissed it.

I thought, this is like a hallmark card. What are you talking about? But the wisdom of that has borne fruit in that it has made, because I'm so hyper and fast-rhythmed that I'm always, you know, what's the next thing? Like, chasing my own tail it's has put the pause button on so that i've really had to re-evaluate and look at the things that can give you real joy on a daily basis and the other smart thing about it was that, and I was talking to my

daughter about this last night, is that in saying find a pocket full of happiness in each day is giving you permission to be joyful and to think, wow, I speak with Adam Buxton today. This is a great opportunity and a great experience. And, you know, he's bothered to put all this time and energy into researching and coming up with questions that nobody else has before. And that is something to be happy about and joyful about. And don't feel guilty that, well, you know, I have, you know, she has died and that you should be in a kind of double-edged compliment, I suppose, in a way, to navigate your way ahead. And it's been really, really useful. Because if you – I know people talk about mindfulness, and I always sort of poo-poo that and think, what the hell are they talking about?

But it's just taking that time to think the weather today is absolutely amazing. So prior to my wife's saying that to my daughter and I, I never really have thought about that. I never consciously think what is the – what's the golden nugget that is to be absorbed in today? And maybe there's more than one. So that has really been incredibly helpful. The most difficult part that I face now is when people that knew my wife really well, and I saw two people this week

by happenstance in a restaurant, and they never mentioned her. They never said, there was no acknowledgement and i was left feeling well if they don't text afterwards which they didn't that it's like her life had been cancelled or obliterated or had never happened and i understand that people think well you're in a restaurant you can't sort of of say, well, I'm so sorry or whatever. But even if somebody just squeezes your shoulder, you're indicating that human connection of I understand or a text afterwards. One word, sorry, or an emoji or thumbs up or whatever.

So when it's negated in that way, it feels hurtful. And people have asked me, have you got to the anger part of death, you know, dealing with death? And that is as close as I've got, the feeling of, well, I feel slightly differently. Well, I feel slightly differently and, you know, you said don't be judgmental but I am about somebody who's just said, well, you know, I'm sorry. Mrs. Buxton is no longer here. I'm not going to talk about her. She never existed. People can't deal with it though sometimes, can they?

And they don't know. How to? They don't know how to. I say always mention the person. You're so happy to have them ghost back. Yeah. I suppose they're the threat that you're going to fall apart sort of being a jelly on the floor. That's the thing. You worry about triggering someone to use a modern phrase.

Trigger away is what I say. Trigger away. Yeah. yeah yeah it's my absolute conviction having had psychoanalysis when i was 42 that in relation to my life experience secrets are toxic yeah and by talking about this stuff once you get it out there what's the worst that can happen you know what is the worst that you could say to me today or try and you know winkle out of me that i haven't been willing to talk about before and for the british sensibility it's you know you're criticized for being oversharing i.e overbearing i.e shut the fuck up yeah yeah yeah too much

too much oversharing yes Yes. What is it? I suppose I read a review for a book the other day by a psychologist who had written about how essentially it was like everyone's turned into a snowflake. That was a very facile encapsulation of what the book seemed to be about, i.e., you know, too much sharing, too much talking about this stuff risks cheapening it right so that's the thing that my dad always felt and when i was writing about his last months right i was thinking what would par think about me writing this in a book and not only that but being a bit glib every now and again and throwing in some jokes and he wouldn't like it i mean i'm pretty sure he wouldn't like it so what do i do about that do i think tough luck mate you're dead and um i i love you and that's going to be part of this book so it's not like i i want people to dislike you yeah but i

disagree i i disagree that you can't talk about this stuff you know and and i do think like i really struggled with it because i thought i don't know if i'm right maybe in the long term maybe i will regret writing about my dad's last months and being fairly candid and maybe i will reach the point one day when i end up feeling like my dad, you know, and thinking, actually, in the long run, it's probably best not to talk too much about these things. You know what I mean? Did you ever have those anxieties? Yes. Joe knew that I kept a diary. And there was no point where she ever said to me, you are not going to write about what is happening to me. That never ever came up.

But a good way into what you're talking about is that a few weeks after she was diagnosed in January 2021, she said, I don't want anybody to know about this and i said you are putting an unacceptably heavy burden on your daughter our daughter and me because we're then going to have to lie and i hate that um that somebody says you know cianna buxton he says oh how's your wife oh she's great where is she she couldn't come today she you know, she's staying at home or she's on location or whatever. It's too much. And she was, she said, I'm very private. I don't want to be judged or to be pitied by this. And I said, I understand that. But let me put it like this, Joan. You know that I was great friends with Victoria Wood. And when Victoria got her first cancer diagnosis, I tried to be as present and supportive as I possibly could be

as a friend. When it returned, and she chose not to tell the group of which I was one, and reduced it to a very, very small number number of people I felt as if I had been an inadequate friend and that I had failed her and I said hearing about her death on the news was like a double whammy I felt so appalledalled, cheated and shocked and ashamed, really, all at once. And I said, people want to express how they feel about you. And I think that it will be incredibly positive and restorative and all that. She said, yeah, but it's not going to alter the fact that I'm going to die. And I said, yes, but we're all going to die. And that was the only major argument that my daughter and I had with her. And there was a standoff. And I said, well, we're going to go

ahead. And we informed, you know, 30 or 40 people that we knew. And it was such a relief to be able to tell people because the support that we got was instantaneous and she saw the value of that um and she did quip and joke you know she said i've never seen so many flowers i've never seen so many presents um and people who reveal themselves of how much they care in a way that they never do in real life until you're gone. So she was very grateful for that. It's tough, though, isn't it, with a person's wishes surrounding that kind of thing? I mean, someone might say, for example, with Victoria Wood.

Yeah. That's tough luck if you feel bent out of shape hearing about it on the news. That was her decision. She wanted to not tell anyone. That's how she dealt with it. And you have to respect that, which you did. But there is, you know, there's always a contradiction of what gives you the right to talk about somebody that has died. But like you were writing about your father, it's your experience. And this is my experience of that.

And people who have read it and knew my wife said, that's it. We get it. We understand why you've done it. I think it is comforting as well to read about someone else's experience of facing the end. Yeah, because we all do. I mean, Jo joke. She said, you know, it just happens to be my turn. else's experience of hugely facing the end yeah because we all do i mean joe joe joe she said you know it just happens to be my turn but she said every one of us in this bedroom you our daughter you my husband we're all going to be dead and the idea that it is so terrifying and

unsettling is mitigated somewhat by just reading about the reality or hearing about the reality of it. That, yeah, of course, there's loads of bits that are upsetting and frightening and painful in all sorts of ways, but there are also, it's dealable with. People deal with it. She said so much better that we've had eight months to be together and to say everything that we wanted to say to each other.

Whereas my daughter's, one of my daughter's best friend's father dropped dead of a heart attack. And their grief is of a whole different scale because they are denied that opportunity to, you know, the person leaves work in the morning and that's it. You have to try and remember what did you say? Well, goodbye. And it's as short as that. So she was so accepting of it, which she provided the guide of how we should deal with it. And she said, all I want, Swaz, which is what she called me,

she said, all I want is that promise me as much as you possibly can, that I will die in our bed, in our home. And I felt that that was an amazing thing to be able to make good on that promise. Because I thought, make good on that promise because i thought you know i said well yes of course but the reality is if she'd had to be hospitalized or go into a palliative care hospice or whatever that that seemed to be the likely way but you know mercifully she she didn't have that which i'm really grateful yeah well i'm glad that it worked that way and you know it was really moving reading it and it was thank you it reminded me of your father of my dad yeah and my mom who she went a bit quicker but uh she died in 2020 and it was that was a surprise but all these things

you know I was glad that I was with them both at the end. Right. Having... It's an extraordinary privilege, isn't it? Yeah, I think it is. Yeah. I mean, it's not great. It's not cinematic. At least it wasn't for me. Yeah. It wasn't cathartic. Did your father ask to be let go? He made it clear that he didn't want any more treatment at a certain point. Okay. But he never said to you, let me go. Just let me go. He never said that. No, he wasn't the kind of guy who would ever say anything that emotionally articulate. Okay. Oh, even luckier that my wife did say that. So she did, yeah? Yeah, she did. And we said, go. We understand that, you know, to be in this state of discomfort and exhaustion, you know know you have our permission

please don't hang on for anything go and how quickly after that did she go uh two weeks later right it's funny how much people do decide what they're going to do you know you sort of imagine well the body just hangs on automatically as long as it can. But it is a decision, isn't it? I think so. Yeah. My mom definitely just gave up. And that was it, really. Whereas my dad was hanging on until he sold his flat.

He wanted to tie all the loose ends up. Right. So he's like, the sale's gone through. He was pretty bummed out that it didn't get as much as he was hoping for so do you think your father was masculine feminine and your mother was what do you think their combination was i think he was pretty masculine masculine masculine masculine and your mom uh she was just fun so whatever So whatever that is. I think, well, there was a more masculine, judgmental, daily male-ish side of her.

I characterize that as masculine, perhaps unfairly. And then there was just a sweet, soft, funny side. Did that predominate? Yeah, yeah. We watched with mel and i together and we hooted with laughter and i loved the fact that she introduced me to all these movies which seemed a little transgressive and um but i'd watch them on on vhs you know we watched life of brian together on vhs and and it was such a great uh memory to have whereas my dad just he thought all comedy was terrible he was like 15 years older than my mom yeah yeah yeah no old school old he was very old school Thank you. now have you done one of those things for GQ on YouTube where you go through and break down your most iconic roles no but i've done it on during the oscar marathon i did it for

vanity fair in new york yeah yeah yeah and i think you do your whole life and your career in about you know 30 seconds yeah but i haven't done the gq one no never been asked i mean it's the same same thing same exact thing okay well i was going to do something not totally dissimilar okay and um ask you for some memories of a few of the movies i mean because especially in the early 90s you were working with a non-stop series of pretty massively heavy hitters director director-wise, right? Yeah, but playing very, you know, supporting parts. So I had no, I didn't have any of the pressures that the leading character would have had. But far away. I'm not complaining.

Yeah. But you formed a good relationship with a lot of these people. You appeared more than once, obviously, in Robert Altman's films. Yeah, I did three with him. Yeah. And how was that, though? The first one was the player the player then preta porte which was a disaster we had no script and then gossett park which had a script yeah i don't think i've ever seen preta porte good don't there must be good bits though everything's getting reassessed now okay well i'm not going to be the one to reassess that one. Did it feel that it wasn't working while you were shooting it?

We didn't know that he had had a heart transplant, so he was very, very ill. And the script would read Adam Buxton meets Richard E. Grant's character on the first floor in a room that has no windows. Go. They have an argument, and you wouldn't know what it was about. So there was a situation where, he's dead now,

Danny Aiello, who was playing a catalogue buyer who was in Paris. And he would try and muscle in on scenes that his character couldn't possibly have been in. But because there was so much free-for-all improvisation encouraged and allowed, he alienated people very, very quickly because, you know, there'd be scenes

where a guy in his position would never be speaking to the head designer of Dior or something like that. So that's when it got, you know, divided and ruled amongst the actors. So you go beta in those situations, do you? You just sort of think, all right, well, I'll let you get on with it.

You don't try and muscle in. Well, I was playing the male version of vivian westwood and i had thigh high 12 inch heeled boots literally kinky boots that'd be made for some men who like to wear that gear in private tory politicians exactly with an orange and some stockings and hanging upside down. Yeah, exactly right. And I had a billiard stick turned upside down in order to walk because I was about seven foot tall. So I didn't have the speed to get around

to deal with Danny when he tried to muscle in on scenes. But Altman said, oh, E. Grant, just let it go, just let it go. And there was a scene because Altman said, oh, E. Grant, don't, just let it go, just let it go. And there was a scene, because Altman famously always used real people to flesh out scenes. So when there was a fashion show that my character was displaying all these Vivienne Westwood creations, Sophia Loren's character meets Marcello Mastrioni for the first time. And they had been, their characters had been lovers, you know, 30 years before.

So she faints. And Danny, in his wisdom, decided that he was going to become first and forefront in this scene by he was the one who was going, stand aside, stand aside, I'm going to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. And it was ludicrous because he would never have been in that situation to do that. Oh, man, it just, the proverbial shit hit the fan

because Lauren Bacall weighed into him and so did Rupert Everett. At which point he said to, Lauren Bacall said something like, get off. This is not your place. She came out of character. And Daniel said, you left-wing commie voting. He went off on one. Oh, my God.

And so that was the dividing line. And because there were real press, because of Fashion Week, all around there, they thought – and because a lot of them couldn't hear the dialogue, they thought that this was all part of the scene, this fight that happened. Well, that fight was probably the high point of the movie that never got into the movie, but was hilarious. But the problem was that after that, nobody spoke to Danny Aiello. He was literally sent to Coventry, and that was brutal because he was a very sensitive man.

I'd worked with him on Hudson Hawk, another disaster, you know, four years before that. But his ego was such that he just couldn't resist being the guy in an ensemble. So it was hilarious. But nobody spoke to him. He had to go into different restaurants. Oh, man. So just brutal. Were you relieved at the end of that? were you relieved because dead danny's dead so you know yeah holy shit what a cast list though i mean it's like it was incredible you're making it up almost incredible how did robert altman

think it could possibly work to just let that many talents and egos work it out amongst themselves. Because the Achilles heel of Altman, and I absolutely loved, adored and worshipped that man, was that the films that were his greatest successes, Gosford Park, MASH, Nashville, The Player, all were Oscar-nominated scripts, and they were scripted, which he then embellished with incredible improvisation and a freewheeling atmosphere of an entourage and every single actor being mic'd up at the same time so that everyone could hear if something's happening in the corner you could add it

but he I know envy is maybe not the right word but he couldn't write like the writers that made those movies that I've just mentioned

so when he did things that were literally improvised or on a sliver of an idea, they just went up the swanny because you can improvise if you've got a boundary, if you know what you're improvising about. But when it was a free-for-all act, it was on Pret-a-Porter and he was very ill,

it was just an absolute mess and a missed opportunity. Yeah, exactly. So that's when his ego just got in the way, I think. Hard to do a spoof of the fashion world as well that is so beyond parody anyway exactly it's like trying to do a good takedown of the art world yeah you've got to have a really insider smart script to do that yeah so do you really know what you're talking about otherwise it's taking pot shots that you know it's you're just going to miss all the time. And it did, unfortunately. Mentioned Hudson Hawk. That is being critically reassessed.

Astonishing. I don't know if you're aware of that or not. No, but I think that whoever has watched that has had mind-altering substances to help them arrive at that position. I haven't seen it since it came out, but there are people online who say, actually, it's been unfairly maligned. I disagree with them. It was terrible. It was a complete mess. I don't know because I was in it.

Why was it such a mess? Because the script that we started off with, it was Bruce Willis' baby, his idea that the story went so AWOL. The initial script was, you know, all the pages were 120 pages of white script. And within two weeks, it was a Crayola box of different colors. So you knew that many hands and writers and ghostwriters had their ha'penny worth put in there. And as soon as you do that, you cannot make a movie by committee. It's just, in my experience, I've never known one that has worked. And that suffered worked and that suffered

terribly from that was it a fun process at least you had a lot of scenes with sandra bernhardt yeah i loved her but it was not a happy experience but i have become and remained great friends with sandra bernhardt for the last 30 years so you know there's always a bonus yeah there you go that's your pocket full of happiness there. Exactly right. Yeah. And she is so vituperative. Oh, my goodness me. She is lethal. Going back to the world of sex.

Yes. Have you ever done a sex scene? Yes. Henry and June. Oh, you did. Fred Ward and Uma Thurman were in that. Yes. Maria de Medeiros. Henry Miller. But yes, I did. I did with her. And she was absolutely wonderful to work with.

Yeah. Totally nude for that. Stark naked. And the embarrassment is that when you're in a bed and they say, ooh, you were shooting in Paris, can you just lift your left bum cheek to the left a little bit and then pump a little bit more like that? You know, it's pre the current situation where you have intimacy coaches.

Yes. Everything is plotted and planned out and supervised. There it was 80 crew members in anoraks standing around while you have your kit off trying to look lusty in a bed. I'm not complaining. The only good thing though is that in those

days they were probably trying to avoid seeing anything too private. Right? Like they didn't want to... Oh, it got an R rating. It was one of the first R ratings. But they weren't allowed to show trying to avoid seeing anything too private, right? Like they didn't want to... Oh, it got an R rating. It was one of the first R ratings. But they weren't allowed to show penises in those days on screen, were they? No, they didn't.

Mercifully not. Yeah. What are your formative memories of sexy scenes in movies? Like which were the ones that... The two... There were three. I saw Women in Love, Ken Russell's film, made in, I think, 1970. And I saw that in 1972 when I was in a hormonal teenage storm.

So Alan Bates bonking Jenny Linden in the mud outdoors was, and remains, an incredibly erotic image in my head. was Anne Remains, an incredibly erotic image in my head. Then I saw Clockwork Orange, which had a speeded-up sex scene with Malcolm McDowell and two ladies that was very athletic. And then the one that was Anne Remains for me, the greatest sex scene that I've ever seen in a movie, was Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, who I was obsessed with in don't look now yeah because they were married people having sex which both of us know about and it intercut between afterwards when they were getting dressed and then going back into

the sex scene i've never seen it done like that before or since and i absolutely believe that they were madly in love and sexually charged by each other yeah i still think that that it's never been bettered for me what are yours well i mean they had sex for real is that right on that no they didn't they were just i worked with julie christie and uh on dennis potter's last tv series called karaoke and i asked her about it and she said no no, we didn't. Ah, okay. But she said people want to believe that we did, but she said we didn't.

Yeah. She had no reason to. Yeah, yeah. She was very open about everything. My formative ones were, going back to Bowie, The Man Who Fell to Earth. Oh, yes. There's a couple of scenes where Rip Torn

is playing an aging college professor and he carries on with some of his young female students, which I was not expecting. I was watching it aged 11 with my mum thinking, Wow, David Bowie. I love David Bowie. Ooh, sci-fi film. Great. It's going to be like Star Wars with David Bowie. And it wasn't like Star wars with david bowie and it wasn't

like star wars with david bowie it was a weird art film with sudden very vigorous riptorn shagging and man it was embarrassing and not sexy so what movie did you find sexy name of the rose there's a scene in name of the rose where Christian Slater is visited by a sort of feral peasant girl. And he's in his monk garb. Which is why he lives in rural Norfolk now. Exactly. That's where we all end up. And he is visited by this peasant girl.

And she sort of moaning and groaning pulls his monk costume off and then everything gets pulled off it's terrific stuff and um for a long time that was in in the vhs days i think when that was released on vh, that was a great, great time. I'm trying to think, like, I mean, on the whole, sex scenes don't really do it for me because I just think, well, this is neither one thing nor the other. It's not, like, gratifying. And they're very seldom so beautiful. I mean, I think Don't look now counts as one which is

it works there's a sexy thrill to it but it's brilliant as well because it is so relatable yeah and it feels real it feels like a real dynamic between a couple that anyone could relate to so that's a different thing but most sex scenes are not like that also as you know that's i was going to say also my wife um gets very embarrassed if our children are in the room even though they're totally fine with it she'll she'll just start going oh dear oh no oh dear no let's fast forward that thank you yeah and she's some cornflakes. She's not stuffy. I'm making her sound like stuffy and she's not. But she doesn't like that.

She doesn't like watching a sex scene with the whole family. Do your children like watching sex scenes with the whole family? No, I don't suppose anyone loves it, do they? I don't think so. No. No, I mean, unless they're kind of a weird family. I don't know. Just projecting.

Some saucy stuff in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Yes. But you weren't involved with that sauciness in those scenes, were you? Regrettably not, no. I was playing a drug addict doctor called Dr. Seward. Yes. Who was Anthony Hopkins Van Helsing's sidekick. Did you have scenes with Tom Waits in that film?

Yes. He was extraordinary. Yeah. I was looking after him in the asylum so i had a scene where i was inside his cell in which he then tried to attack me and uh he was he was the most inventive improviser that i've ever come across i've never seen him since but we got on so well doing that and And I, of course, love his music, as I imagine you might. Yeah, he was extraordinarily inventive and open about anything.

And because he was a musician, his approach wasn't like any other actor that I've met before. A good experience, though, right? Yeah, working for Coppola. You know, Coppola, Scorsese and Altman were the three indie gods of directors when I was a teenager and then at drama school in the mid to, yeah, early and mid 70s.

So to have the opportunity to work with all three of them was i thought well you know i can die now yeah yeah did you get a chance to sort of get to have any conversations with coppola or hang out yeah because we we rehearsed for three weeks at his napa valley estate in a big warehouse that had the godfather desk in one corner, the boat from Apocalypse Now in another corner, props from all his movies. So, and he cooked for all of us every single night. He sent us Keanu Reeves, Carrie Elwes and I into a hot air balloon as a male bonding experience with our characters. So, yeah, he operates from trying to create a real extended

italian family atmosphere by cooking for everybody and i've never known so many visitors come to a set with their pets and their relatives and their family where scorsese being you know the other great italian american worked in the opposite way everything was monastically quiet controlled disciplined and I suppose it was something to do with the fact that Age of Innocence was set in the Edith Wharton world of New York's upper echelons of incredibly wealthy people

so it was very stuffy so the atmosphere was the antithesis of what Coppola created on Dracula so it was interesting to go from, straight from Coppola's set, you know, with a one week break into Scorsese land. And I thought, you know, this is the man that has probably made some of those violent films, this side of Tarantino. But he was so fastidious

and controlled and quiet speaking, although at bullet speed, that it was the opposite to how Coppola operated. And then, yes, Can You Ever Forgive Me, which everybody loved and which was a great experience for you. Everyone just enjoyed, this has been said to you before, but enjoyed seeing how much you enjoyed the upward trajectory of the film

and the way it was embraced and then the nomination, the Oscar nomination. It was, everyone felt good about it was embraced and then the nomination the oscar nomination it was everyone felt good about it at a time in the world where people needed something to feel good about i think right no it was it was the ride of my lifetime and i knew that it was a one and only ticket to that that would ever happen um never before or since so i unashamedly you know grabbed every bit of it with both hands toes you know hair follicles whatever i could lay on it really good script as well i think that's jeff witty and nicole holofcener is that how you say her name yeah whose movies i really like as well enough

said is one of my favorite films have you seen that agreed yes yeah i think that's an absolute peach um but what are you aware like maybe linking this back to with no as well when you're making a film like that did it feel good on the set did you have a day uh on both those movies where you sort of got home and thought actually actually, this is quite good? Or is it not? I thought the script for Withnail was so extraordinary, and I thought they'd never cast me, and then I heard that Daniel Day-Lewis had passed on it, and they'd been trying to cast it for two months. So then there was a rumour that it would never come out,

because they said it had no plot, it didn't have any stars, it didn't have any car chases or any women, and Crocodile Dean was the big hit of that summer. We were making it in 1986. So I had the bone-deep conviction that even if it never got released, I could use it as a calling card for people to see as a script and as a vehicle. And ironically, you know,

having played an out-of-work actor in it, almost every job I've had subsequently is as a result of somebody liking that film. Can You Ever Forgive Me, we thought would be... It was released on four cinemas. And when we were at the Telluride Film Festival, Melissa said, like,

Fox Searchlight executive said, she said, how big is the release? And he said, four. And she said, what, 400 or 4,000? He said, no, four. She'd never done a movie that was platformed in that very conservative way of you know testing the waters if anybody paid to go and see this movie right so but after the audience response

up that mountainside in that one horse town festival which was so welcoming she said to me something's happened in here and we knew by the reaction in the room we could hear people laughing and then we could hear them crying at the end and she said this is this is something special and it then a week later we were in toronto and the same thing happened there so we knew that it wasn't just a fluke and it then sort of steamrolled um and the joy of making it in new york on location with her with you know all my scenes were just with her and maybe one other person here and there um i thought if any of that can transmit into the finished movie then this has a chance of being a success and And because she wasn't, it wasn't a Melissa

McCarthy comedy diva vehicle, which I anticipated that might be. I thought, well, you know, it has a chance. Yeah, none of us could, you know, have possibly predicted that we'd both end up at the Oscars sitting next to each other nominated for our respective roles. Yeah. And I was pleased to hear you talking about the fact that you kind of came to terms with the fact that you were unlikely to win because Mahershala Ali was up for Green Book that year. Oh, yeah. He was a shoe-in. Yeah. So you didn't have that pressure of just everyone seeing you be absolutely gutted if you didn't win it. Yeah.

There was not one scintilla of doubt in my mind that anybody had to prepare a speech. Amy Poehler was sitting behind me and she leant forward and she put up her hand, you know, this loser sign, finger and, you know, first finger and thumb. And she went, loser, join the losers club. And she said, yeah, but you must have thought. There must have been 5% of you that thought when they announced who was winning, that you were going to win, you weren't ready to get up there. And I said, I genuinely did not. And she said, you're a liar, you're a liar. I don't believe it that you didn't think there was a possibility you were going to

win. I said, I absolutely knew I wasn't going to. Yeah. Is there a part of you though, the more Bruce Robinson part of you that sort of looks at all this stuff and goes why is it so important i mean it that whole world collapsed a little bit further this year with the chris rock uh slapping yeah incident and it really i think for a lot of people just became like this is unsupportably mad in the modern world to have this whole elaborate celebration of people. I think because there is such a plethora of awards that by the time you actually get to the Oscars, it's like, oh, we know who's going to win. We know what their speeches are because we've heard them at all the other ceremonies beforehand. So I understand that.

the other ceremonies beforehand so i understand that but what is impossible for my experience to resist is that when you're told in september of a year upper mountainside a little film festival in telluride journalists start telling you you're going to get nominated for stuff and you're surrounded by people who are financially invested for the film to get nominated and then you go to the next festival and then awards start coming in critical awards start and you're on the merry-go-round of awards chatter and clatter yes the rational part of your brain says this is all just you you know, soap and bubbles. Nobody will remember who won as indeed happened. I was being congratulated by quite a variety of people who said, oh, great on your Oscar. And in the beginning, I used to say, I didn't win it.

And you think, they want to believe that you did. And they think that you did. So, you know, let it go. You get so caught up in the maelstrom of that. And that it's incremental that you did so you know let it go yeah you get so caught up in the maelstrom of that and that it's incremental that you don't think that it's it's going to last and you go from telluride that toronto and then another week and then another award and i think i'd won 42 critics awards by that point and the london critics awards when you come back here and once in Europe and all across America and Canada that if you're dealing with that on a daily basis to then say oh well I don't care about that then you've got to step out of it and say I'm not doing any more promotion I'm not doing any of this but I just had an absolute ball you've flown all over the place and treated first class larded our smoke, blown up your teepee. I loved it. So I got to meet everybody I'd wanted to meet my whole life.

New talent and old legendary talent all in one room. Am I right in thinking that was the first time you met Barbara Streisand? No, I met her at a party whilst making The Player in Los Angeles. Okay. In which a room full of people, every single person was famous. There were about 60 people there and everybody's Warren Beatty and Whoopi Goldberg and Winona Ryder up, down and sideways. So I'd met her there and had a 22-minute conversation with her about Prince of Tides because I knew the screenwriter, Becky Johnson, who'd taken me to a preview before it was released for the cinema. So that was my calling card to get her attention because she was in the very vulnerable situation, Barbara Streisand, of getting every opinion about what her movie was like before it came out.

But I was a nobody. She didn't. I didn't even register on her fameometer. So when I then met her at the Oscars, she knew who I was. Wow. Would it be possible? I love the letter that you wrote to her. When I was 14.

Yes. Would you read it? course i will how would you got into her though before you read it like as a 14 year old in swaziland oh 12 i first saw her in 1969 in funny girl yeah and then she and donald sutherland both had very long faces. And in all the descriptions of them in the press that I got, you know, via film magazines on subscription, were that they couldn't be movie actors because they didn't look conventionally like movie actors. And I thought, well, if they can do it, then I can be an actor, never mind a movie actor. So I wrote her this letter. Dear Barbara Streisand, I sincerely hope this reaches you personally. You don't know me yet, but I'm writing to offer you an idea you might like to consider. My name is Richard and I live in a small African kingdom called Swaziland in Southeast Africa. Since seeing Funny Girl, we, my family that is, and I have been very big fans.

I have followed your career avidly. We have all your records. I'm 14 years old. I read in the paper that you were feeling very tired and pressurized by your fame and failed romance with Mr. Ryan O'Neill. I would like to offer you a two-week holiday or longer

at our house, which is very beautiful, with a pool and a magnificent view of the Esselwini Valley, which the Swazi people call Valley of Heaven. I think you will agree when you see it. Here you can rest. No one will trouble you, and I assure you, you will not be mobbed in the street, as your films only show in our one cinema for three days so not that many people will know who you are so no chance of being mobbed please consider this respite seriously you will always be welcome yours very sincerely

and in anticipation of a hasty reply richard p.s i'm studying shakespeare's summer night's dream and hope these lines will reassure you theseus for never anything can be amiss when simpleness and duty tender it or puck's line if we shadows have offended think about this and all is mended that you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear yours richard so i then posted that letter on twitter with a photograph of me taking a selfie outside her gates in Malibu. And she then replied the next day. And I absolutely lost it. I was like a jellified 12-year-old baby. What did she say on Twitter? Oh, she just said, you and Melissa were so great in your latest movie. barbara yeah and that was

it you know for a fan it was just and then i had a subsequently i'm doing a tv series with sally field jason siegel had written and was starring in about three years ago in philadelphia and i went to a screening at donna cairns house in the Hamptons and they're great friends. So I was the guest of honor and I sat with her and had a two hour one to one conversation. That was everything that, you know, if you're a fan of somebody, it was the dream realized. So I thought, well, I didn't get the Oscar, but I got this. I felt better. My poor has had to put up with his obsession

and this erotic charge for our entire marriage. And she said, well, you know, she's married to James Brolin and you're not her type anyway. So I've got you, Soir, so no chance. That's great, man. Thank you very much for reading it out. Thank you.

Wait, this is an advert for Squarespace. Every time I visit your website, I see success. Yes, success. The way that you look at the world makes the world want to say yes. It looks very professional. the world want to say yes it looks very professional I love browsing your videos and pics and I don't want to stop and I'd like to access your members area and spend in your shop these are the kinds of comments people will say about your website if you build it with Squarespace. Just visit squarespace.com slash buxton for a free trial.

And when you're ready to launch, because you will want to launch, use the offer code BUXTON to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So put the smile of success on your face with Squarespace. Yes. Continue. This is ridiculous. Hey, welcome back, podcats.

Richard E. Grant there. And Rosie, I can't even see what you're doing, but I know that you've stopped walking. And I am now tugging you with my trousers. It's a good sentence, isn't it? I've got the end of the dog lead, the handle part of the retractable dog lead, tucked into the pocket of my jeans so that I can hold my recorder with my left hand and my phone, which has notes on it, and my phone, which has notes on it, with my right hand. The sun has now gone down because of the clocks going forward and screwing up my recording schedule. It's dark and the moon is not out, or at least we can't see it from here in the field that we're in.

I have a torch with me in my pocket. I suppose I should get it out fairly soon. We're just down by the road. That's why you can hear the occasional car. And the stars have come out just in the last five minutes. So it's a nice clear night. And not too cold. But I can't really see what my feet are doing.

I don't have my glasses with me either, so that makes things a lot more challenging. It's a bit murky. Anyway, Richard E. Grant, I hope you enjoyed that conversation. I hope you took some of the more challenging parts, especially my Lord of the Rings admission, in the right spirit and don't feel the need to boycott me and my work from now on.

I'm really grateful to Richard for making the time. It was fantastic to meet him. He's good fun to talk to. Wow. Maybe I can get him back on the podcast sometime. I don't know. I do recommend his book, Pocket Full of Happiness. Good showbiz anecdotes in there, but more importantly, honest, interesting,

and emotional insights from someone caring for the person they love and saying goodbye to them. I've put a link to Richard's book in the description of the podcast, as well as a few other Richard E. Grant related links. Before I say goodbye today, I wanted to mention a book that I contributed to. It is called Into the Red, and it is about birds, quoting now from the British Trust for Ornithology website, which I have linked to in the description of the podcast. Into the Red is a collaboration between 70 authors and 70 artists with a single goal, to raise funds to support conservation work aiming to reverse the declines of our most at-risk birds.

Contributors include Nick Hayes, M.G. Leonard, Isabella Tree, Richard Mabey, Amir Khan, David Gray, Jim Moyer, Harriet Mead, Bridget Strawbridge, Mackenzie Crook, Megan McCubbin, and many others. I didn't mention Adam Buxton, but I'm in there. I wrote about the skylark, aka Technobird. aka Technobird. Did a short poem about the Technobird. And, well, I don't want to be unnecessarily hard on myself, but I think they might have used my illustration out of pity.

I don't think they wanted an illustration from me, but I sent them one anyway. I slightly misunderstood the brief. So they included it in the book, but i would not say that it is one of the better illustrations in there there's some beautiful pictures of birds as well as some great bits of writing it's a lovely book and profits from the sale of the book will be donated to the british trust for ornithology and the Rare Breeding Birds Panel to further their work on red-listed birds, i.e. birds that are now at risk.

Anyway, link in the description of this episode to that book, Into the Red. Good Christmas present. Oh yeah, also in the description of the podcast this week is a link to the BFI South Bank website where you can buy tickets for Bug, the, what's it called? I forget what it's called. Video Nasty special because they've got a horror season going on at the moment at the BFI South Bank in London. So we're doing a special horror themed bug show, which will feature horrific or

just kind of weird and dark, sometimes humorously so, music videos from the last 15 years of bug shows. Maybe one or two that we haven't shown before. I can't remember. No, sorry, no Michael Jackson, no Marilyn Manson. Some things are too scary. Anyway, we have the first performance of that show

coming up on Friday this week at 8.45. Friday the 4th, I think it is. Hello, Fact-Checking Santa here. The date for the second performance of the Bug Video Nasty Horror Special is the 18th of November. Friday the 18th of November. Adam originally said the 11th, because he's a jerk! And he's being punished!

And I'm sorry for any inconvenience caused. Rosie, I think I can see you. You just look like a hairy blob somewhere ahead of me, crawling along at the end of this line. Let's head back, shall we? It's actually quite a nice night. Even though it's not even six. Quarter to six and the stars are out. It's ridiculous.

Okay, thanks very much once again to Richard E. Grant. Richard E. Grant. Thanks very much indeed to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his always invaluable production support, conversation, editing, general encouragement and enthusiasm.

Thank you, Seamus. Much appreciated. Thanks to Helen Green. She does the artwork for this podcast. It's great. Thank you very much to all who work at ACAST

for their ongoing support helping me secure sponsors etc much appreciated and thanks very much indeed to you you listened right to the end you're great so I'm going to give you a dark hug if that's okay

like when I say dark I mean in actual light terms. It's not going to be creepy, I don't think. Come here. Hey. Take it easy. See you again next time. And for what it's worth,

I love you. Bye! Bye. Give me a little smile and a thumbs up. Nice, like a fun, wonderful, fun. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Give me a little smile and a thumbs up. Nice, like a fun, wonderful, fun. Like and subscribe.

Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Thank you.