The Love Of My Life Was My Best Friend. Then She Died At 34.

6/7/20261 hr 6 min

Grace Rouvray thought she knew what grief was.

Then her best friend Katie died.

In this deeply moving conversation with Holly Wainwright, Grace shares the story behind her memoir Is It Too Early To Bitch? — a love letter to the friendship that shaped her life, and the devastating loss that changed it forever.

Grace and Katie met at drama school in 2009 and quickly became inseparable. Through awkward share houses, terrible dates, career highs, creative projects and countless late-night phone calls, they became each other's person. The kind of friendship that can feel every bit as profound, intimate and life-defining as a romantic relationship.

Then, in 2021, Katie died suddenly at just 34 years old.

Grace reflects on navigating unimaginable grief during lockdown, what it means to lose the person who knows you best, and the unexpected ways loss reshaped her understanding of friendship, family and herself.

This episode explores the bond between female friends, the reality of life after loss, and why some of the greatest love stories aren't romantic at all.

Buy Grace's book, Is It Too Early To Bitch? is available now.

Learn more about The Katie Lees Foundation.

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CREDITS:

Guest: Grace Rouvray

Host: Holly Wainwright

Group Executive Producer: Naima Brown

Executive Producer: Bree Player

Audio and Video Producer: Josh Green

Social Media Producer: Olivia Colman

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Clips

The Impossible Phone Call

Vaccine Listed As Cause

Mother’s Gentle Truth

When Empathy Fails

Is It Too Early?

Transcript preview

First 90 seconds

Grace Rouvray· Guest0:00
And I said to her, um, "I have so much that I wanna tell Katie." And she paused, and it was, like, in the most beautiful, gentle way that I've never heard my mum speak to me, and she said, "You're gonna think about what Katie would think and what she would feel for the rest of your life, and I promise you, that feeling becomes nice over time." And I said to her, um, "How long? When does it feel nice?" And she paused and said, um, "A really long time."
Holly Wainwright· Host0:26
[instrumental music plays] Welcome to No Filter. I'm Holly Wainwright. I want to prepare you for the conversation you're about to hear by telling you it's in equal measure beautiful and painful, glorious and gut-wrenching. It's a love story about the kind of life-changing relationship that many of us are lucky enough to have, but somehow aren't the kind that all the songs get written about. Grace Ruvray is a writer, an actor, a comedian, and an audio producer. She's a mum. She once worked a fancy job in advertising, and she's a wife. And she's a best friend. The most defining relationship of Grace's adult life might just be the one she has with Katie Lees, who Grace met at uni and who died in 2021 in circumstances that, for a whole lot of reasons to do with that particular time and place, no one much wanted to talk about. How does it feel for the worst loss of your life to be turned into a political football? Where does best friend fit in

Clips

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