Meghann Fahy: What is the harshest thing anyone has said to you?

The question

What is the harshest thing anyone has said to you?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

A fixed Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here

I had a casting director once stop me in the middle of an audition and tell me to go wash my face in the bathroom because she felt my makeup was too distracting, but I wasn’t wearing any. It was mortifying. It felt like a power play and I was so young, I didn’t know what to do.

The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 April 2026 source ↗

Others on this question

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Julian Lloyd Webber British cellist and conductor

When the surgeon told me I wouldn’t be able to play the cello again, in 2013. I have a herniated disc and it’s pressing on a nerve in my neck. I announced I was stopping playing in 2014. I absolutely did not want to stop.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 15 July 2023 source ↗

Lee Child

“Try this, you’ll love it.”

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 7 June 2025 source ↗

Desmond Tutu Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town; chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Nobel Peace Prize, 1984

There will always be so many who might say, “Ah, he’s a politician masquerading as an archbishop.” Politics is so all-pervasive, and in my theology, obviously, all of life belongs to God, and you don’t have compartments, this is your economic life, this is your political life, this is your religious life. Religion encompasses all of those. But yes, I wouldn’t myself have said I was setting out to be a political animal.

Recorded Academy of Achievement interview source ↗

Frank Bowling