Hugh Grant is known for being both prickly and charming, and often at the same time. Jon Stewart once said that Hugh Grant was the worst guest he’d ever had on The Daily Show, but instead of being defensive and denying it, Hugh Grant was self-deprecating and apologetic, conceding the point. Likewise, there’s a famous clip from Graham Norton’s British chat show in which Hugh Grant lists off all the famous female leads he’s worked with, and whether they liked him or hated him, and he admits that many of them hated his guts.
In that clip, Grant singles out Julianne Moore as “loathing” him, which is interesting because it was a bad performance in a Julianne Moore movie that led Hugh Grant to have a liaison with sex worker Divine Brown back in 1995. That particular incident is probably best known now as the one that led to the Jay Leno interview that allowed The Tonight Show to overcome David Letterman’s The Late Show in the ratings, a hold that Leno maintained throughout most his The Tonight Show run.
Grant, meanwhile, spoke of the experience when asked about it on this week’s WTF with Marc Maron podcast, where Grant was also so boundlessly delightful that even Marc Maron — known for being a grump — was completely charmed.
“I was about to launch my first Hollywood film,” Hugh Grant said of his arrest for receiving oral sex in a public place from Hollywood sex worker Divine Brown. “My timing was impeccable!”
Asked why he thinks it happened, Grant admits exactly why. “My problem was, that was my first Hollywood film. And I’d just been to see it, and it was about to come out in a week or two. I had a bad feeling about it, and I went to see a screening, and everyone in it was brilliant, but I was so atrocious that I was not in a good frame of mind.”
“I had a Ken Russell kind of lunch,” Grant admitted, referring to the hard-drinking British director. “And one thing led to another.”
Grant says that what happened wasn’t deliberate. “I was just disappointed in myself.”
For those who are curious about what movie led Hugh Grant down a path that led to his arrest and later the Jay Leno interview, it was a movie called Nine Months, and the reason why the incident didn’t ruin his career is because “the film did alright at the box office. I think it did quite well, and that’s all that Hollywood really cares about,” Grant admitted. “They don’t care what you get up to as long as you make them money.”
That was true then, although as both Grant and Maron admitted, it is less true now. It should be noted, however, that despite the success of Nine Months at the box office, the film was received poorly by critics, some of whom singled out Grant’s poor performance.
Source: WTF with Marc Maron
