Richard E. Grant on eating the same seven meals growing up, Henry Higgins and coping with loss

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast.

0:30Experience cloud-like comfort with high-resilience foam that's hypoallergenic and never needs fluffing. The sturdy steel frame ensures longevity, and the modular pieces can be rearranged anytime. Check out washablesofas.com and get up to 60 % off your Anabay sofa, backed by a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. If you're not absolutely in love, send it back for a full refund. No return shipping or restocking fees. Every penny back. Upgrade now at washablesofas.com. offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. You are listening to Ruthie's Table 4 in partnership with Montclair. When I think of Richard E.

1:10Grant, of course I think of his brilliant films and him as a great actor. But what I really think of is Richard and his wife, Joan, in the early days of the River Cafe. They were married a year before the restaurant opened and lived right across the river, Coming in for lunch, always sitting at the same table, they were warm and lovely and absorbed in each other. I remember their daughter, Olivia, being born a few years later and then bringing her in as a baby when the restaurant was still small and starting up, just like her. We all grew up and off into our own lives. Now, over 30 years later, Richard and I share something else in common, the loss of the partner we loved.

1:59People once asked me, someone asked me about my advice on grief, and I have no advice on grief because it's so personal, how you do it, whether I have a friend whose mother went to bed for six months and never got out because her son had died. She just took to her bed, and I never stopped. So we all have different ways. And I was thinking, but if we start with the food, part of that, do you eat for comfort or did you stop eating when you had trouble? I ate for comfort and the last, once Joan was diagnosed and the subsequent eight months that she had left, which we didn't know were going to be so short, I cooked three times a day.

2:40Did you? But, you know, I'm so struck when anybody subsequent to her death says to me, what would your final meal be? And I said, well, the experience is of somebody who is dying is that food is the last thing that they want. That because of the drugs that she was on for lung cancer, everything started tasting like sand. So it didn't matter. It got to the point where it didn't matter what I cooked. she would say well this doesn't really taste of anything or the texture of it is is awful so she lost interest completely in food but it didn't stop having to make meals all the time so I got very inventive more inventive I mean going through cookbooks obviously yours trying to find things that she would like.

3:34So you were thinking of her. When you were cooking, it was not just a distraction for you to kind of do something. Because cooking can be that way. You have to follow the recipe. You have to put, no matter how sad you feel, you do have to put the olive oil in the pan at a certain time. And it does create a rhythm. It came as a method. It came in order almost, doesn't it? It does. And it's also because she said to me when she was diagnosed, please make a promise to me if you can possibly keep it that we are together all the time and that I die with you in our house and I said well you know I can try and make that promise but we just don't know what's down the line but and apart from four days when she had to go into the Royal Marsden because she got an infection we managed to honor that so to go back to your thing about cooking, it meant that however short the time was that I was in the kitchen, it meant that it gave me some respite from dealing with her pending imminent loss.

4:42And I suppose gave her time away from me as well. And sometimes, you know, she'd fall asleep and then that gave me time to go and cook. But having that routine and something to do was incredibly important. And in terms of what you said earlier, that you can't give advice about how to deal with loss or death what i found is when people have said to me oh you get over it in time i really object to that because i think that i've never wanted to get over it it's a navigation around it on a daily basis and that's that really is the way that i find that is the way that i've i've coped with it that i don't have an anticipation that it's sort of a hump in the road that i'm going to get over and the other side is going to be yeah i'm now free because i don't feel like that I always thought the worst two words in the English language was move on.

5:32Somebody said to me the other day, it's been five years, Richard, you've got to move on and you've got to man up and you've got to start dating other people. Yeah, that tells you more about the other person. Yeah, it does. I think if you can, I would say that because I kind of went through a death experience with my son six, maybe ten years before Richard, so I kind of knew. And you had no preparation for that. That one was, I would say there are two types of death. Because he had a seizure and. Yeah, it was like a car crash. He was here one day and then he was gone next. Yeah, so the ones like, you know, Richard, my Richard, and your Joan is kind of being eased into that world and the knowledge and everything.

6:15And then there's the ones that you get a call and it's a car crash. But I think that, and so, and each one, you know, for me, I couldn't cook after Bo died, after the car, you know. I got the phone. I'd go in the kitchen and I'd start cooking and start to cry or whatever. And actually coming in here was, for me, it was like coming home. But with Richard, we ate all the time. We had meals in the bed. We had meals upstairs. He really loved to eat. So his taste buds weren't affected? Not at all. No, he loved to eat. You're lucky. But what about cooking for your daughter? Where was Olivia at this time?

6:55She came to stay with us for that entire time. And did she eat? She ate, yeah. And she, yes, she did. She cooked sometimes, but I think she found it so overwhelming, you know, dealing with what was coming. And I don't know whether you found this, but did you have a sense or get told when Richard's life was nearing its end? Not really, not until, because he had brain doubt, Richard had a fall. and he fell on his head and he had a bleed. And then it was a slow, we were in Mexico. And that was also interesting because Mexico, to be away from my country, away from my friends, although I was surrounded, I took two rooms in a hotel and I was never alone for four months.

7:42But I was suddenly in the Mexican world of eating at a different time, eating different foods, having no wine but drinking tequila. And there was a whole thing. And the hospital that he was in was a beautiful place, and the food was part of the whole, it was really important. People would bring food, and he always ate. And, you know, he was a great eater, Richard. So it was something we shared to the very end. But I knew he was going to die probably. We knew we were coming towards the end probably about a month before because he had a stroke. But this was after two years. But I think it might have been a different kind of experience in terms of Jones.

8:20Did she eat? She didn't eat. In the last week of her life, she ate almost nothing. And we had a palliative carer who would come in twice a day for 10, 15 minutes. And she said to me 10 days before, she said when, in her experience, when the person who is terminally ill stops really not wanting to eat, that is usually three, four days. and Joan had said to Olivia and I two weeks before she died she said I know that it's it's the end is very near and she said please let me go and I think that this is I've now in my reading and other people have shared their experience said that that it is a very common thing for people to say let me go they want they want you to give them permission to not hold on anymore Joan said you know I'm so exhausted I've had a good life I want you to you know to find a pocket full of happiness in each day and not be sad when I'm gone she said because all of us are going to die she said you too included did you listen to her?

9:31yeah I have it's been a great mantra by which to navigate grief ever since then I found you find that pocket of happiness yeah consciously finding joy in things that you may have just taken for granted beforehand. And that's been a great gift that she's given me and our daughter. Yeah. And what about work? I have had a huge amount of work since Joan died. And rather than retreat, I have grabbed all of it with great gusto. Me too. I have moments where I think, you know, how are we going to get through this? But never that idea that I might stop or give up. You know, I love doing this. We love writing our books.

10:19As I said, I love the podcast. Sit down and have... Excuse me. Go on. Did you get that on camera? You did. You just lifted the plate, licked every bit of the plate. why not why not you can't really do it in a restaurant without offending people you think yeah maybe not i know you know have you done it and offended somebody a woman actually said i'm offended by this or you could just see the look uh a combination and joan used to say for god's sake please so all i would do is do this and then do it behind or lean down pretending that i'm doing something on the floor do you think it tastes different when you look what you're tasting licking off the plate, is that different from what you've put in your mouth?

11:05I think that what it is is it's like the encore at the end of a performance. What is an encore like at the end of a performance? I've only done one musical, My Fair Lady, and because a musical, there's music for people to re-perform, you can do a sort of final verse of something. But in the theatre you can't. All you can do is bow. You can't say, oh, well, I'll do to be or not to be again. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. This is an amazing sensation. But that's what I really love is sometimes when at the end of a musical, then it's all over, and then they come, like guys and dolls will come out and do, you know, Luck, Be A Lady, or When You See A Guy, or My Fair Lady, you could come out.

11:55You obviously played Henry Higgins, didn't you? I played Henry Higgins, yeah. What a great part. Yeah, absolutely amazing role. What's your favourite song from My Fair Lady? I think... I wonder if it's the same as mine. Go on. What is yours? I've grown accustomed to her face. Yeah, I agree. Is there a better song? No. I've grown accustomed to her face. I can't see. She always makes the day begin. I've grown accustomed to the tune. She's whispering at noon. Her smiles, her frowns, her ups, her downs. It's a second nature to me now. Here's to you. That should be the ending of this. I'm so sorry.

12:34Not the beginning. Oh, I know. Richard sang it for my 17th birthday to me. I said, that's all I want you to do is to sing me I've grown accustomed to your family. I do think it's a beautiful, beautiful song. It is amazing. Was that the last theatre that you did? Yeah, that's the last time I did theatre. I did it in Chicago 10 years ago and then I did it at the Sydney Opera 15 years ago. We should bring it to London. I would love to see it again. You can't do it now. Because of misogyny. Because of the misogyny. Yeah, tell me about that. Melissa McCarthy's daughters came to see it in Chicago, and they were 10 and 13, and they were appalled by the misogyny of it.

13:15They said, how can any woman put up with that? When you were performing it, did you feel a sense of that? Well, my steer on it was that Higgins is on the spectrum and that he is, he doesn't mean to be as cruel as he is. He just, he says there's no filter whatsoever, so it just comes out, you know. You should be thrown out like a cabbage leaf or whatever. And he is so joy-filled when Eliza gets all the words phonetically correct that he embraces her. and it's no accident to me that straight after that she sings I Could Have Danced All Night and it is the way that I interpreted it was that that was as close as he could ever get to saying he's in love with somebody.

14:05Interesting. So it was very physical and we grabbed each other. I think it's the first musical I ever saw. I went to see it, I was telling the other day that my dad used to take me because we lived in upstate New York and every sort of big treat maybe once every couple of months. He would take me down to New York in the car and we'd have lunch and then he'd take me to a musical. And then we would buy the record. And then we would take it home to the country and there was nothing else to do except just listen to it all the time. This is really generational that we share on this because in the 60s, every musical that came out, my parents had the LP of it and played it incessantly.

14:45So our whole family knew the lyrics of every single musical that came out. If you say that to people now, they think you're, you know, it's insane. But the other thing about the musicals, without naming any, is that they don't have those tunes so much anymore. They're not as kind of hummable. Are they that you come out and you can remember on the street where you live? Oh, I think the people who watch Wicked would argue with us. They would probably, yeah. But I find it slightly challenging. But I haven't seen My Fair Lady ever, probably even since I was a kid. Wow. A long time ago. So you saw it on Broadway?

15:21Yeah. Do you remember who was in it? I think it was Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison. I think it was. Wow. But I was really young, I have to say. But it was my very first musical. And then I saw West Side Story, saw My Fair Lady. I saw a really one that, and he used to come in here, Stop the World, I Want to Get Off by Leslie. Tony Newley and Leslie Bricus. And Leslie and Evie came here all the time. And I used to come up to him. I remember the first time I met him, he was with Michael Caine. And I said, I bet I'm the only person in this room that knows, you know, say, My Mishki Mishko for whatever those songs were.

16:01What kind of fool am I? You know, what kind of fool am I? And he loved it. And he would sing it with me because you can see I have any chance to sing. But those, yeah, they kind of grow up with those, you know. Do you know what your first one was? The first one was The Sound of Music and then Mary Poppins. But I'd heard My Fair Lady before I saw those, before I saw the movie. And my parents had all the Rodgers and Hammerstein, Carousel, King and I had all of those, record collection. So I knew all of those before I ever saw the movies.

16:39an open kitchen in the river cafe means we as chefs are able to talk to our guests dining in the restaurant sharing how we cook their food where the ingredients come from as well as hints and advice for cooking the recipes in the books and now we're bringing that same ethos to our podcast a question and answer episode with me and our two executive chefs, Sean Winoan and Joseph Trevelli. All we need is to hear from you about what you would like to know. Send a voice note with your question to questions at rivercafe.co.uk and you might just be our next great guest on Ruthie's Table 4.

17:28Let's be real. Life happens. Kids spill. Pets shed. And accidents are inevitable. Find a sofa that can keep up at washablesofas.com. Starting at just$699, our sofas are fully machine washable inside and out. so you can say goodbye to stains and hello to worry-free living. Made with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics, they're kid-proof, pet-friendly, and built for everyday life. Plus, changeable fabric covers let you refresh your sofa whenever you want. Need flexibility? Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa anytime to fit your space, whether it's a growing family room or a cozy apartment.

18:09Plus, they're earth-friendly and trusted by over 200 ,000 happy customers. It's time to upgrade to a stress-free, mess-proof sofa. Visit washablesofas.com today and save. That's washablesofas.com. Offers are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply. Parking shouldn't slow you down. ParkWiz gives every driver a shortcut. Book ahead, save up to 50%, and skip the hassle of circling the block. Park smarter, park faster. ParkWiz. Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. You were born in Swaziland. which is now called Eswatini, which is the tiniest country in the southern hemisphere, southeast Africa, below Zimbabwe besides South Africa and Mozambique.

18:54And why were you there? My father was the director of education for the British government. So that's why we were there. And that's why I went to school there. Yeah. And so it was amazing. Yeah. Tell me about your dad. How did he have that? Oh, he was incredibly charming, good man by day, and then a very violent, unrecognizable alcoholic by night because after my mother cuckolded and left him for his best friend. In Africa? Yeah. And did you go with her? No, no, I stayed with my father. As an only child? I had a younger brother. But I think my mother was, her argument was that she didn't want to take me away from everything that was familiar to me and living at home.

19:38She was not a very maternal person. I think she's one of those people that you might, if you're unkind, would call it narcissism. Shouldn't really have had children. Did she marry very young? I think in that time, that generation, she got married at 24, which was when people got married. In Jane Austen, not that she was in Jane Austen time, but by the time you were 26, you were an old maid. You were an old maid, exactly. Exactly. What are we going to do? Yeah, so 24 was not. When was your mother married to your father? Yeah, probably the same. When they were young. Maybe even younger. And I was young.

20:12I was married when I was 20. Well, I met Richard when I was 19 and then was married, had my first kid at 24. So I started very, very young. You started young. I was a baby. Yeah. But so did your mother move down the street or did she move to the same town? No, she moved to another country. Another country. Another country. And then that man got transferred to Peru and then she came back to Swaziland and was treated like she may as well have had a scarlet. Yeah, a letter A. A scarlet letter. Yeah, adulterous. Yeah. And so people, it was that awful situation where I would meet, you know, in the Saturday market where people were buying fruit and vegetables.

20:49I would be with my mother on her weekend visit twice a month. And people would speak to me who were her former friends and would literally blank her. It was, it felt very cruel. So what was food like? My mother had no interest in cooking, so we had a cook who she taught to cook seven meals. So I know every day of the week what we had. Did you say seven meals? Oh, seven as in seven days. Yeah, and they did not rotate and they did not alter. So every Monday? Tinned fish was on a Friday. Okay, seven on a Friday. Tinned fish on a Friday. Tinned fish on Friday because there's no fresh fish there. Beef on a Monday.

21:30Pork on a Tuesday. Chicken on a Wednesday. lamb on a Thursday fish on a Friday and then we'd have roast beef again on the Saturday and then a barbecue on Sunday unless we went to Mozambique which we would then have peri peri prawns. What are those? Prawns with peri peri sauce on them. What's peri peri sauce? Oh it's the stuff that the Nando's chain have based all their fortune on it's a very very hot sauce, rectal Fire, basically. I haven't had, have you had, what did you say? Rectal fire. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. You have to sit on an inner tube. If you have no sensitivity, if you have no tolerance for spice, like I don't, you have to sit on an inner tube for about three days because it is brutal.

22:18Really? Yeah. And before we leave the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, was the tin fish cooked exactly the same way then? Exactly the same. It was tin tuna cooked with fresh tomatoes. Was there a day you looked forward to more and one you dreaded? No, because if you don't know anything else, then you're used to that. And then my father remarried when I was 12, and my stepmother cooked spaghetti for the first time. I'd never seen spaghetti. You'd never had a spaghetti until you were 12. So in 1969, I had spaghetti, and I was absolutely appalled. I thought that it looked like white worms in a bowl, and how could you possibly eat that?

22:56I mean, that's how provincial and isolated we were. So you grew up there and you came to London, back to London. I came to London in 1982 when I was 25 years old to seek my fortune. So you really grew up in Africa? Oh, yeah, the whole time. Went to college there? I went to college in, university in Cape Town, which is the nearest by 1 ,200 miles, that you could do a combined English degree as well as a theatre diploma because my father said he wouldn't pay for me to just go to a drama school in England. But you knew at what age that you wanted to be an actor? Well, I made shoebox theatres with cutouts when I was seven.

23:34And then when I was nine, I made glove puppets. And then when I was 12, I got some marionettes. And then I had full-scale marionette theatre in my parents' garage and did school plays in the school holidays for kids. Did school encourage you to do Act of the Hips? To some extent. And there was an amateur theatre club in Swaziland. And so I was a member of that. So it was, you know, the line of when I look back on it is very, very clear that I think it chooses you. But the notion of saying that you're going to be an actor where I grew up was, you know, people said, you know, you're kidding. But also if your father was head of education, you would have thought as an educationalist that he would have encouraged, you know, the education that the…

24:20You would think, Ruthie, but he said, you know, you have a good brain and you have good school results. why waste it on becoming an actor because 99 % of them are unemployed from what I've statistically read and he said you know I dread that you're going to spend your life destitute wearing tights makeup and avoiding a buggery. Did he enjoy the theatre though? Yeah he loved it yeah whenever we came back to England every three years he would take me to every single show that was on so I I remember when I came when I was seven and then, especially when I was 12 years old, I saw just a huge variety of things.

24:59I saw Oliver, the musical, in the theatre. I saw Ginger Rogers do Auntie Mame at Drury Lane. Ginger Rogers? Wow. So... What year is that? 1969. Did she dance? Yeah, she did. Dance, dance, sang. Wow, Auntie Mame. Did you feel like, in food terms and real terms, that you were always a foreigner in another country growing up? No, because all the food that I had was English food. Where I grew up was English. And all the people that I grew up with were English. Oh, they were? Yeah, so they weren't. All the expat community there were essentially mainly from England. I see. Or people that had been on the colonial circuit that if they'd lived in India and then come into Kenya, as it was then called, then Kenya, then to Rhodesia, which then became Zimbabwe.

25:51It was like this sort of trail of the last countries becoming independent one by one from the British Empire. And the people who couldn't face coming back to live in England had got so enamored of a colonial life, ended up in Swaziland. Do you remember what the food of Swaziland, apart from the prawns, which you described, Was there a kind of cultural... Yeah, maize. What did the people eat there? Maize, which is corn, and it was made into a kind of polenta-type mixture with gravy and a small amount of meat. Yeah, that was the traditional food. Yeah, and were there vegetables or fruits or anything exotic that you were...

26:34There were amazing subtropical fruit there, lychee, or we call them lychee, mangoes, but it was all seasonal. You couldn't, you know, that is what is so extraordinary about living in London, is that you can get all of this stuff all year round, for the most part. But did you describe going to the market where your mother was snubbed? Yeah. Do you remember the market? Oh, yeah. Describe it to me. What was it like? It was a big open-air market, and all the people running the market were Swazi women, and they had, you know, piled-up stalls of fresh fruit and vegetables. And you bartered and every person arrived at the basket and bought their stuff.

27:18And there was one supermarket as well, but going to the market on Saturday was an absolute ritual. And I think that going to the market, my mother would buy these vegetables. She didn't cook them, of course, but she would buy all the produce. And it was also a very social thing that you got to meet everybody else. And then she stopped going when all these people snubbed her. And what was the move like to Cape Town? Because then you were in university there. Yeah. Did you have your own place? Yeah, it was 1976, and it was the year that black South African students rioted against being taught in Afrikaans.

27:54So you felt that it was the kind of crucible of revolution. And being 19 years old at that, I just thought, it's all going to happen now. The whole thing is going to change. because Nelson Mandela's daughters, Zinzi and Zeni, were at school with me in Swaziland. I did school plays with them. So we really felt that this was the moment that apartheid would end. And, of course, it took another 14 years. Did you know their mother? Did you know Winnie? Never met her, no, because they used to come to Swaziland by bus from South Africa and then go back by bus. Then you were taking drama courses. Yeah.

28:34What was that like? It was, I found doing the academic part extremely tiresome because all I wanted to do was the practical theatre stuff. But in order to appease my father to get a degree, because he said, you know, without that, there's no guarantee that you could have a job at the other end. Maybe he was right. Yeah, maybe he was right. Well, partly right. Yeah, he hedged his bets, but I think he was... What was the other degree? I can't remember what you said. Oh, it was an English drama degree and then I did a theatre diploma. Yeah, I loved doing it. I co-founded a multiracial theatre company in Cape Town for a year called the True Theatre Company.