It took three years before Sandra Bullock could find the right words to express her grief over the loss of her partner. In August 2023, 57-year-old photographer Bryan Randall passed away from complications related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which is also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
The Oscar winner broke her silence about the loss in an interview on the SmartLess podcast, which is hosted by Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, and Sean Hayes. (The episode, which is available via SiriusXM for early access subscribers, will be on all podcast platforms as of August 24.) She appeared on the show to promote Practical Magic 2, which will be released in theaters on September 10.
Sandra Bullock and Bryan Randall at the Oceans 8 world premiere on June 5, 2018 in New York City.
Jackson Lee
As fans of the original film know, grief is an important theme in the Practical Magic universe—and also in Bullock’s life. “I started grieving Bryan four years before he passed,” she said of her late companion, who she met in 2015. But she had to bear that burden in secret, as Randall “asked me not to share” his diagnosis, she said. “I wasn’t allowed to speak about it. That was the request and I tried—I honored it,” she added.
The global pandemic, which began in 2020, further “isolated me in the process,” she said. That, plus raising her two young children (Louis, now 16, and Laila, now 12) and caring for Randall as his condition worsened, was “a trifecta that was pretty dark.”
“My person left a lot earlier than the body left,” Sandra Bullock said of Randall’s experience with the degenerative disease. “I don’t think I ever dealt with that until after he passed, because you’re just on this treadmill, you know?”
Sandra Bullock and Bryan Randall leaving their hotel ahead of the Ocean’s 8 film premiere on June 13, 2018 in London, England.
Neil Mockford
Bullock described the fatal disease as “the process of elimination over the course of a year. And some where you keep going back and they give you all these milestones, these things to do, these grips, these breath tests, all these things.”
“You have to quietly plan. And I’m a very good planner with illness,” she added. “It doesn’t scare me—not the illness itself, it doesn’t scare me. I can see and be around just about anything. But I had two young kids that were navigating it, especially a little girl who saw [Randall] as a father figure.”
The time needed to care for Randall spurred Bullock to briefly retire from acting in 2022. “Right now, work in front of the camera needs to take a pause,” she said then. “I want to be at home. I’m not doing anyone any favors who’s investing in a project if I’m saying, ‘I just want to be at home.’ ’Cause I was always running, I was always running to the next thing. I just want to be present and responsible for one thing.”
It took Bullock three years to speak publicly about Randall’s death, telling the Smartless hosts “I feel safe to talk to you guys about it.”
“What I have now, I would not have to share had I not gone through that. I would not ever want to go through it again,” she said. “Though you never know, life … it’s tricky.
Originally published by Vanity Fair Italy
