More than a year after his sudden death at the age of 49, Grant Imahara is still being mourned by his Mythbusters co-stars. Imahara passed away suddenly in July 2020 after suffering a brain aneurysm, and his passing left Mythbusters co-host Adam Savage feeling as though he had been “gut-punched.” Savage and Imahara starred alongside one another for several years on the popular Discovery Channel series, with Imahara serving as part of the show’s Build Team across more than 200 episodes.
Savage opened up about Imahara’s passing in a recent interview with Yahoo! Entertainment as the series honors the late star with a special online charity auction. Reflecting on Imahara’s July 2020 death, he told the outlet that like “everybody else” who had known Imahara, he was “gut-punched by Grant’s passing last year,” which he said “felt like almost too much in the face of all the other existential crises that were going on.” Imahara’s passing came amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and also came less than a year after automotive legend Jessi Combs, who co-hosted Mythbusters, was tragically killed in a crash while attempting to break her own land-speed record. Savage said, “Those of us that were lucky enough to know Grant knew him as a lovely man of honour, who wanted to share his knowledge with everybody.” He also opened up about his favorite memory of his late co-star, recalling how “every time an experiment went the way that it should have, Grant expressed so much joy with his face.”
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“What I felt inside is exemplified in Grant’s face. Every time something worked,” he said, recalling one experiment in particular in which Imahara, Tory Belleci, and Kari Byron performed an experiment in which they “made urine by creating ice balls on the wing of a plane.” Savage recalled how “they went to this test facility that had a freezing cold wind tunnel and they completed the experiment and it worked so perfectly. It’s one of the great results we’ve ever had MythBusters. And the look on Grant’s face when the last piece of the puzzle came in is… it’s like you won the lottery. And I think at that moment, he absolutely felt that he did, because that’s how I feel.”
As part of the Mythbusters‘ Build Team, Imahara was responsible for making the robots and other electronics needed for the experiments on the series. He remained on the series until 2014, after which he, Byron, and Belleci reunited for Netflix’s White Rabbit Project. In a statement following his passing, Discovery said, “We are heartbroken to hear this sad news about Grant. He was an important part of our Discovery family and a really wonderful man. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family.”
