Grant, 68, found out by accident that a longtime friend had betrayed him.

Richard E. Grant discovered his best friend had betrayed him after 29 years of friendship: ‘Absolutely devastated’

Grant, 68, found out by accident that a longtime friend had betrayed him.

By Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt is a writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2024. Her work has previously appeared on Yahoo and in American *Journalism Review* and *The Shreveport Times*.

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February 22, 2026 10:00 p.m. ET

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Richard E. Grant in 2021. Credit:

Samir Hussein/WireImage

Sounds like Richard E. Grant has at least one more story to write.

The *Nuremberg *actor recounted the time a friend of almost three decades made it clear how she really felt about him when an email she had written accidentally went to him.

"What I thought was one of the five best friends in my life," Grant said on a recent episode of the *Mad, Sad, & Bad* podcast. "She sent an email from Africa to a mutual friend in Australia who'd asked for my email address, and, because my name was in the body of the email, I got inadvertently sent this email."

Grant explained that the message "arrived on a day when I had heard for a third time that a film that I'd written and was about to direct, the finances had collapsed. And I was doing the final episode of *Frasier,*" which aired in May 2004.

Right away, Grant said, he noticed the email contained "a paragraph of such toxicity" that he decided immediately to cut the person off.

Richard E. Grant, left, stars in 'Nuremberg'.

Scott Garfield. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

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"And I thought, 'That's not a real friend anymore.' And I was absolutely devastated," Grant said. "So I and pasted that and then sent it back. And I said, '29 years of friendship?'"

Host Paloma Faith groaned at the difficulty of such a situation.**

"It was of my script that I had written, which was entirely autobiographical," said Grant, who wrote and directed the 2005 dramedy *Wah-Wah *loosely based on his own life. "And she had read this script. Our daughter was very smart, because she was 16, so exactly 20 years ago. She said to me, 'In your heart of hearts, haven't you always known this about that person?'"

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When Faith said the experience must have been difficult for Grant, he recalled it had been "just brutal."

Because that person knows you in the most formative part of your life, when you're still dreaming of getting regular work out there as an actor," Grant said. "Nevermind the other things that have happened to me since. So when you're betrayed like that, there's no going back for me."

Grant, 68, has more than recovered professionally, appearing in movies such as *Jackie*, *Logan*, *Can You Ever Forgive Me?*, and *Saltburn *over the last two decades.

Watch their full conversation above.**

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