Richard E Grant is set to appear on the second series of Celebrity Traitors, joining 21 other well-known personalities in the Scottish Highlands. The BBC gameshow, fronted by Claudia Winkleman, will see contestants compete for a £100,000 prize fund donated to charity. The cast includes Michael Sheen, Jerry Hall, and Miranda Hart.
Personal Tragedy and Family History
Grant's late wife Joan Washington passed away on September 2, 2021, following a diagnosis of stage IV lung cancer. The couple met in the 1980s when Grant attended her studio for private voice coaching sessions. They married three years later, after Grant proposed at an airport, and were together for 38 years. They shared a daughter, Olivia, and a stepson, Tom, from Joan's earlier marriage.
Joan received her diagnosis two days before Christmas 2020 and died eight months later. Grant announced the news on social media, posting a photograph of them dancing to the song Only You. He wrote: "ONLY YOU! Joan – Love of my Life and Giver of Life to our daughter Olivia. Our hearts are broken with the loss of your Life. 35 years married and 38 together."
In a letter to the Daily Mail, Grant described the final months with Joan, noting that King Charles, then Prince of Wales, visited her shortly before her death. Grant recalled the Prince saying, "It's been an absolute honour to have known you, Joan," to which Joan quipped, "I'm still here."
Father's Alleged Shooting Attempt
Grant has also spoken about a disturbing incident from his childhood. On Davina McCall's podcast Begin Again, he recounted that his father, Henrik Esterhuysen, attempted to shoot him when he was 15. Grant had emptied his father's Scotch supply down the sink, and his father responded by holding a gun to his head.
Grant said: "He tried to shoot me when I was 15 when I emptied all his Scotch supply down the sink. As I was half way through [pouring] the eleventh bottle, gun at the back of my head, I ducked, went off, ran to the garden. He finally found me, said 'I'm going to blow your brains out,' I said 'go on, do it, just get this over and done with.'"
Grant said his father pulled the trigger but "because he was drunk it wavered so it went straight past and I fell to the ground and ran away." Despite this, Grant said he would still have preferred living with his father than his mother, whom he has described as a "narcissist." His father died of lung cancer in 1981, aged 51, and his mother died in 2023 aged 93.
Joining Celebrity Traitors
Grant explained his decision to join the show, saying: "Because I think it's a most brilliant game, where even Stephen Fry's encyclopaedic knowledge of Sherlock Holmes couldn't solve the mystery. You can't have any clue."
Celebrity Traitors airs on BBC One and BBC iPlayer from 8pm on Thursday, October 1.
