Best Of: Actor Richard E. Grant / Comic Leanne Morgan

Fresh Air

NPR

Tv & Film, Arts, Society & Culture, Books

4.4 • 34.4K Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2023

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Richard E. Grant (Withnail & I, Can You Ever Forgive Me?) was married to Joan Washington, an acclaimed dialect coach, for 35 years. He writes about their relationship and her death from cancer in the new memoir, A Pocketful of Happiness.

Also, podcast critic Nick Quah reviews Dreamtown.

Comic Leanne Morgan calls herself the "Mrs. Maisel of Appalachia." She says she's interested in speaking to an audience that she says gets forgotten — middle-aged women, mothers, and people in rural America. She has a new Netflix special called I'm Every Woman.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From W.H.Y.Y. in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley.
0:05.6	Today, actor Richard E. Grant. He's written a new memoir, a collection of diary entries during
0:11.2	the last days with his wife of 35 years, Joan Washington, who died in 2021 of lung cancer.
0:18.4	On her deathbed, Washington told Grant that after she passed, she wanted him to find a pocket full
0:24.0	of happiness in every day, which is now the title of his memoir. Also, we'll hear from
0:29.6	comedian Leigh Ann Morgan. She discovered her passion for stand-up comedy later in life,
0:34.8	doing weekend sets at comedy shows while raising three children in Tennessee.
0:39.5	And Bank Leigh and I would think, oh, nobody's going to want me. I'm a mom. You know, I'd head on a
0:44.3	a kitten healed with a capri with birds on them. You know, I mean, I just always felt kind of
0:50.8	on the outside. Now in her 50s, Morgan has found success. And critic Nick Wah reviews the podcast
0:58.6	Dream Town about a small California desert city trying to revive itself through the legal sale
1:04.3	of cannabis. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. From my guest actor Richard E. Grant,
1:13.9	the story that defines his adult life has not been his rise to fame or his prolific film and television
1:19.7	career. It's not his writing, directing, or interviewing, or even his long list of famous friends.
1:25.6	It's his 35-year marriage to Joan Washington, an acclaimed dialect coach whom he met during
1:31.3	his early years as a struggling actor. Joan died in 2021 at the age of 74 from lung cancer.
1:38.7	The last eight months of her life, Joan and Richard spent every minute of every day together.
1:43.6	Richard documenting her time through journaling. He's written a book about their lives together called
1:49.4	a pocket full of happiness. Richard E. Grant rose to fame after starring in the 1987 cult classic
1:55.9	with Nail and I. Since then, he's gone on to star in dozens of television shows and films including
2:01.6	the Iron Lady and Star Wars, The Rise of Skywalker. In 2005, he wrote and directed a comedy drama,
2:08.0	film loosely based on his childhood growing up in what was then Swaziland in Southern Africa.
	...

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