How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - ON STARTING OVER AFTER GRIEF… With Stanley Tucci and Geri Halliwell-Horner

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

Starting over can feel heartbreaking and overwhelming, especially after losing a loved one, and the idea of rebuilding a life can seem impossible. In this episode, Stanley and Geri show us that sometimes moving forward isn’t about letting go of the past, but learning to carry it with you in a way that allows life to continue. Stanley Tucci speaks with brave honesty about the death of his first wife, Kate – the guilt he felt as he tried to move on and the difficult choices he faced while creating a new life for his children. Geri Halliwell Horner reflects on losing her father as a teenager, how that loss shaped her ambition and how writing her novel unexpectedly helped her make sense of long‑held grief. This episode explores love, loss and the resilience that allows us to keep going after such events. I hope it brings you a sense of solidarity or confirmation that we don’t need to erase what came before; sometimes, it becomes the very force that helps us begin again. Listen to Stanley’s full episode of How to Fail here: http://swap.fm/l/WCW054IGNZnSnTzEXPTN Listen to Geri’s full episode of How to Fail here: swap.fm/l/a7i32bvmHld3JFuDmShl 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS: Bereavement support: https://www.cruse.org.uk/ Elizabeth’s Substack: https://theelizabethday.substack.com/ Join the How To Fail community: https://howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories 👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @howtofailpod @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod @elizabday Website: www.elizabethday.org Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's often framed as a bold, if somewhat scary choice, but life rarely makes it that simple. Sometimes starting again comes after loss when someone we love is gone, and nothing about our days looks quite the same. First, we listen back to Stanley Tucci, speaking openly about the death of his first wife, Kate. He talks about the terrible guilt he carried, the choices he subsequently had to make, and how he rebuilt a life with his children and without Kate. Then Jerry Halliwell Horner reflects on losing her father as a teenager and how it shaped her ambition and her view of mortality. While writing her novel, she found herself returning to that loss

and exploring grief she didn't have words for at the time. Both stories, I think, show that starting again is rarely neat or straightforward. Stanley and Jerry helped to explain that moving on with your life doesn't mean forgetting the past, but rather carrying it with you and helping you to begin again. First, let's hear from Stanley. And that brings us to your third failure, which is a big one and a really beautiful one for you to share. And it is, as you put it, your failure to help Kate, your first wife. Tell us what you mean by that.

Well, you know, she was diagnosed when she was, I think, 43 years old. And this was an incredibly healthy person. She was barely ever sick a day in her life. She was diagnosed at stage four, but had no symptoms other than a tiny little lump. but the cancer had already spread. It was basically practically everywhere. We traveled, as I said, around the world trying to figure out how to just make her better.

And there are two parts to this, I suppose. The most profound failure was a selfish act, which was I could not be with her when she died. She died in our house, and I knew that if I were in bed next to her or by the bed next to her and was there when she passed away, that I probably wouldn't be able to function and wouldn't be able to take care of the kids. So I began sort of almost like a few days before to remove myself emotionally. and I had to do it because knowing me, I would have been plagued with that moment.

I would have taken that moment into my body, and I wouldn't have been able to take care of the kids. So I started to remove myself, and I feel that's the bigger failure. I suppose in some ways it's a success because I was able to steal myself and get on and take care of the kids and start to figure out how we were going to organize our new life. but it was so awful that I just couldn't be there for it. And I remember being on our patio and looking, I could see our master bedroom, there was a balcony, and I remember when she passed away, there were friends there.

And it was interesting because they were all women who were in the room with her, my stepdaughter, and a friend of ours who was an nurse who was administering morphine to her, and a couple of other friends. And I remember them, I was standing on the patio with other friends, friends. And I remember the French doors being opened and the sheets being taken off the bed and the ambulance had come and all the windows being opened and aired out, like letting air into the room and almost like letting her out. I never saw her again. I think wanting to save her trying to

help and you just can't do it and then you just feel awful. I'm a little better about it now. But the guilt was so profound that I couldn't be there and that I couldn't save her. Yeah. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Oh, thank you. Thanks. Were you able to talk to Kate about that, about the reason for your emotional distancing?

Or was it kind of beyond that point? No, she wasn't really terribly cognizant at that point. So, no. recently a few years ago a very good friend of mine died my friend steve busemi his wife joe and we were all very very close and she died of cancer and i went to flew to new york to see her and she was so thin and she was just sort of laying and friends were there and you'd sort of go into the room and see her and every now and again she might hear you and she might say something but steve was so brave and he was with her until the very end as she literally just faded away. And I thought that bravery was just incredible. And his

sense of peace that he had, that I in no way had, I didn't have that at all. For months, for years, I kept imagining that she would come back. I still think I see her. I still dream about her. She's not very nice to me in the dreams, which is very upsetting. Really? Yeah. She's like, I have a wake up and I feel so awful. She just is very dismissive of me. And I'm so happy to see her. You know, the dreams are so real. And she's like, hmm.

And then she's always, she's either with somebody else or she's just not really interested. Which I think, I'm like, but why? Why can't I have a really nice dream? So I'm laughing, but it's like, it's sort of just like, you know, salt in the wound, you know. Yeah. I mean, that sounds to me like. a representation of your own guilt and your own self-loating, that's you projecting. That's not actually a message from her. No, I think you're probably right. Yes. Yes. Do you believe in an afterlife in any form?

No, but as Willie Allen said, I am bringing a change of underwear. Not really, no. I don't think so. So how old were your children when Kate died? Camilla was seven and the twins were nine. And how do you continue functioning after something that traumatic? How do you live with that grief and raise your children? How did you do it, Stanley? You can't be afraid to ask for help and yet you have to know when to tell people to sort of

keep their distance. The kids went to therapy straight away. It's really about having a community that's going to help you. meeting family and friends. That's really, really important. But you have to be the one to structure that because everybody deals with grief differently and everybody had a different relationship

with Kate, meaning the adults. And sometimes people will have a tendency to romanticize a person to sort of play into the sort of more maudlin aspects of loss. And some people will do the opposite and sort of like, you know, buck up, stiff upper lip and all that. So you have to be the one to kind of regulate that and oversee it.

And then you have to create a new structure for them because kids need and want structure. So the first thing was to hire people who would be able to help me run the household. And I also knew that I wasn't going to work for a long period of time, that I was just going to stay home, get everybody back on track,

and then I'd be able to go to work. And luckily, I was able to do that financially. Those are the most important things is to keep a structure. A lot of it is the same structure, but as I said, with new people and always encouraging them to talk about it. And did you have space within that necessary pragmatism and caring for your children to process your own feelings at some point? Or was it one of those things that you delayed and that kind of hit you years later? No, it kept hitting me.

I did speak to a therapist, you know, a shrink about it, a little bit. But the hard thing was, you know, they say, well, you know, you're grieving. And you go, yeah, no, I know, I know, I know I'm grieving. You know, well, these things have, you know, what are you going to say? I mean, there's really only so much you can say. And I guess, yes, you do go through those five stages of grief or loss, you know, but you kind of have to really go through them. I cried a lot by myself and put the kids to bed and then just sort of

go and fall apart for a bit. It was very hard to go through all of her belongings. I still, how many years later, have things of hers that I just can't get rid of. It's taken years. And even here recently, in the last couple of years going through photos and going through objects and whatever, you know, you end up just falling apart in the middle of the night in my office, you know, in the back of the garden by myself. I've been very lucky. I had so many people, There's so many wonderful friends helping. My parents were incredible. My stepdaughter was great.

And it's really just a matter of just pushing through it. And eventually not blaming yourself and not having that survivor's guilt. What was Kate like? She was amazing. She was very shy. She was incredibly smart, very well read. She was a great equestrian. She loved the out of doors.

She hated wearing shoes, but she hated makeup, and she hated dressing up. The complete opposite of me. I don't like to wear makeup, but I like to dress up and wear shoes. I think I would sleep in my shoes if I could. She was an amazing mother. She was a really great cook. She became a social worker, and then she got her certificate as a mediator. She wanted to study international law when she first got pregnant with her first kids with my stepchildren.

And she gave up that dream to have two kids. And she wanted to study international law. And she wanted to mediate between the Palestinians and the Israelis. That was her dream. Her thinking was very high-powered, as opposed to her husband, which is wanted to make people laugh. I was about to say that puts what the rest of us do into some kind of perspective. I know, I know. I said to her once, I said, Kate, you know, you're really so amazing.

You help so many people. You want to help so many people. You're a great mother. You're a great, you know, friend. You're amazing. I said, what do I do but bring joy to millions? Oh, God. I mean, one of the things that I loved finding out when I was researching for this interview is that Kate is very much part of your life with Felicity in the there are photographs around. You talk about her a lot. And I think that's a very big. peaceful thing and it must have at points being potentially a tricky dynamic to navigate that when you get remarried. Did you feel at any level guilty for quote unquote moving on? Oh my God, yes, terribly guilty. Yeah. I mean, for a long time, it was not easy for Felicity. You know, it was very hard. At first, kids will be really accepting and then they'll start to push away and then one will be accepting and one won't be and one will be. And I was the same. I mean, I'd be so sort of, you know, you know, loving and affectionate, and then I would pull away because I would feel guilty.

I felt strange going away for the first time on vacation without Kate. Everything started to feel strange. But Felicity was so amazingly patient and loving to both me and the kids that she taught us that you don't have to feel bad. It's okay. And she's always a part of your life, but things have to move forward. You can remember the person, but you can't romanticize the person. And that is really the key thing.

And there were family members who did that. And that's just not good. It's not healthy. But Felicity was amazing. And in so many ways, she's like Kate. She's very loving. Is it great listener? Very patient.

Thinks before she speaks, unlike her husband. And it's just an amazing stepmom, amazing mom, and brilliant at what she does. So wonderful hearing you talk about both Felicity and Kate. and I can't thank you enough for being so generous as to talk about that. I know it will help a great many people. You know those times late at night when you're scrolling and you see something online that you've been looking for and you just need to buy it right there and then. You click on the link, you add it to cart before hitting checkout. But then that sinking feeding as you realize you don't have your card anywhere here and don't want to get out of bed. But that's when you see it. That purple pay button that has all of your information saved,

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at a formative age. Do you mind my asking how much of that you brought into the text? And did you find it cathartic? It's funny because, I mean, grief is a strange thing and death. It's going to happen to all of us at some point in our life. We just don't know when. And what occurred to me when I was younger that I didn't have the tools to talk about it. And I was just sort of left with this stone cold feeling of,

I didn't want to make anyone feel awkward, so I didn't have the right tools to express how I was feeling. And also, you know, that's a British stiff upper lip. And, you know, whereas in the East, they used to talk about it. They're much more. But it also gave me a sense of my own mortality. I wanted to put that in the narrative very subtly. So if you don't care about looking at that, you won't. But it's there if you want it.

So if anybody's, you know, having grief, let's look what it looks like. You know, examine it. And Rosie is going through that. not perfectly. She's quite angry if you can make you angry or cold, detached. So I wanted to put that in there. And the other thing, it was really interesting. And I didn't know I did it until I finished it. Right. So I wrote the prologue and the first chapter last. The publisher, Penguin, the American, because I had two publishers, American and British and they're both amazing. But she said to me, can you just give a bit more backstory of Rosie before she gets there,

you know, before she gets to Bloodstone Island and where she came from. And that's where the school is, Bloodstone Island. Yeah, Bloodstone Island is this school and we can talk about it in a minute. But before she gets there, she's at a different school, which is an ordinary school.

And you see what happens to her, how she gets pulled out of school in the middle of a class and told that her mother is dead. That's what happened to me. But it was my father that was dead and I was studying Hamnet at the time. And after I finished it,

and it wasn't until I look back, I realized I've written about what I know. my own experience. I thought, oh my God. So it's really interesting. It was naturally, I think we turn our poop to fertilise us, so to speak. Yes. I think you're going to say pain into art, but I much prefer poop into fertilized. Yeah. Then it's useful. Yes. Everything is copy. Everything is copy. Everything is copy. And everything, I believe, can have meaning. You can be in control of the meaning that you attach to something. Yeah. In the fullness of time. I'm so sorry, first of all, that you went through that experience.

If you weren't talking about it, how did you get through the grief? And what advice would you give now to anyone who might be listening who is in the depths of that kind of grief? Just grief is a very strange thing. And everyone, I don't have the perfect answer, that's for sure. My experience is time. And it sounds like a cliche, but it's true. It doesn't make it better, but it makes it easier. And to sharing, I think, with people that might know what you're going through, I think that's helpful.

That's what I would say is you're not alone. Did your dad die before you? Yes. And I feel, and this is the other thing, there's one upside of losing a parent when you're young. And I call it death energy. I don't think I would be as driven as I was if I didn't understand the value of life. And I think we're losing a parent, not only are you losing someone, but you suddenly become aware of your own mortality. Because before then you think, oh, I've got my parents between me and my own death.

Or even if I'm, you know, whatever I do, I know my parents there. And so when that is removed, you're suddenly staring in the face of your own whatever's in front of you and the unknown. Yeah, I call it death energy. It's like a gas in my tank. I've got to get on with life. What do you think you would have made of it? It's interesting because I think, you know, my father was, he was into like old Hollywood. He introduced to me so much music and literature.

And, you know, he tried to make me like into Shirley Temple when I was little girl. So, you know, I'm sure he'd be very, like, pleased. I used to, you know, think about him doing it for him. But actually, as I grew older, just time, you say, okay, why am I doing it? And who am I doing this for? It's like any job that anybody's doing. What are you doing it for? And for whom?

And why? Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything. Like packing a spare stick. I like to be prepared. That's why I remember, 988 Canada's suicide crisis helpline. It's good to know, just in case. Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a train responder anytime. 988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in Canada.

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