Hugh Grant found the most characteristically Hugh Grant gift to give his co-stars on the last day of filming HBO drama The Undoing. 

The actor has described filming the psychological thriller – in which he stars alongside Nicole Kidman – as the “last time I remember being truly happy” prior to the pandemic, and marked wrapping the show in a special way. 

Speaking to E! News, Hugh said: “I enjoyed the last day very much. It was a very long shoot, six months. That’s the last time I remember being truly happy. I was thinking, ‘Oh wow, I’m exhausted. This is over.’

“I remember giving everyone cigars including young Noah, who played my son. He was thrilled, but his mother was less thrilled.”

In The Undoing, Hugh plays oncologist Jonathan Fraser who becomes a suspect in the murder of a mysterious woman who suddenly appears in his wife’s life. 

Hugh has moved away from starring in romantic comedies in recent years, earning widespread praise for his role as politician Jeremy Thorpe in the BBC’s A Very English Scandal in 2018, as well as starring in films including Cloud Atlas and The Gentlemen.

Last year, he explained his decision to step away from the genre, telling The Hollywood Reporter: “I’ve gotten too old and ugly and fat to do them anymore.

“So now I’ve done other things and I’ve got marginally less self-hatred.”

Earlier this week, Hugh revealed he and wife Anna Eberstein contracted Covid-19 at the beginning of this year. 

“It started as just a very strange syndrome where I kept breaking into a terrible sweat. It was like a poncho of sweat, embarrassing really,” he said during an interview with US talk show host Stephen Colbert.

“Then my eyeballs felt about three sizes too big and this feeling as though an enormous man was sitting on my chest – Harvey Weinstein or someone. I thought, ‘I don’t know what this is’.”

He continued: “Then I was walking down the street one day and I thought, ‘I can’t smell a damn thing’. And you start to panic – by then, people were just starting to talk about this as a symptom.

“I started sniffing flowers, nothing. And you get more and more desperate. I started sniffing in garbage cans. You know, you want to sniff strangers’ armpits because you just can’t smell anything.”

The Undoing airs in the UK on Sky Atlantic and is available to stream on Now TV.